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PHYSICAL MEDIA 



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SPIRITUAL MANIFESTiffiOM 

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THE PHENOMEN 




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RESPONDING TABLES AND THE PLANCipiTTE, 

AND THEIR "iP 

PHYSICAL CAUSE IN THE NERVOCB^^rEaNISM; 

ILLUSTRATED PROM 

G. W. SAMSON, D.D., 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, WASHINGTON, D.O. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPHSTOOTT & CO. 

1869. 






il "Q>q (j>ai7j ZonpaTTjg, to datfi&vtov kavrti gjiimuvelv" — Xeno- 
phon, 

"Druidibus naturae ratio, quam physiologiam appellant, 
nota est." — Cicero. 

"Les effets sont dus a une communication entre leurs sys- 
temes nerveux." — Cuvier. 

"Des effets analogues pouvaient §tre occasionnes par une 
fluide nerveux qui circulerait dans nos organes." — Arago. 

" The laws of action of the nervous principle . . . are an- 
alogous to those of Voltaic electricity ." — Herschel and Midler, 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

G. W. SAMSON, D.D., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
District of Columbia. 



THE AUTHOR'S SALUTATION. 



Eeader, — Whatever your preconceived opinions as 
to the subject of which the following familiar letters 
treat, be your impressions reverence as for something 
sacred or abhorrence as of sacrilege, be your convictions 
those of contempt for imposture or of respect for the 
judgment of honest minds, allow yourself for a passing 
hour to be addressed by the personal salutation "My 
Dear Charles." 

Thirty years ago the idea developed in these pages 
was conceived in the college class-room ; and nine years 
later its reasoning was confirmed among the Brahminic 
maglans of Egypt. The historic classifications wrought 
out in subsequent years took form in works published 
successively under the titles "To Daimonion" and 
"Spiritualism Tested;" whose exhausted editions now 
call for the present reprint, just at the time when an- 
other form of universally observed phenomena appears 
in the "Planchette." 

The " Planchette" is, as its name implies, a little table, 
from four to six inches in diameter, which stands upon 
three supports, consisting of two wheels under the lobes, 
and a pencil thrust through an eyelet-hole at the apex. 
The table moves under the touch of one or more experi- 
menters, and the pencil traces responses for questioners. 
The conditions requisite to success in operating the 
Planchette, as regards nervous temperament, dryness of 
atmosphere, and other concomitants, are precisely those 

(iii) 



iv the author's salutation. 

essential in table responses ; while the character of the 
questions as respects definiteness and relevancy, to which 
answers are given, is also perfectly kindred to that of 
those mentioned in former times. 

The laws of the "Planchette" are those discussed in 
the second and fourth letters of this volume. Its origin 
in Germany about 1853, its appearance at London in 
1861, and its migration across the Atlantic in 1867, ex- 
emplify the allusions in the sixth and tenth letters to 
mysterious phenomena yet to pass westward from their 
old Asiatic seat, and to have their day of wonder amid 
the science of Christian Europe. 

Each new development of this common class of mys- 
terious phenomena indicates more fully the respect due 
to differing views of their character entertained by 
minds of opposite tendencies. The universal employ of 
material instruments in the transmission of " spiritual 
manifestations" should prepare believers in their super- 
natural origin to scrutinize carefully the "physical 
media" which certainly intervene. The array of facts, 
recorded in ages past and observed by the ablest philos- 
ophers, should invite an impartial examination and esti- 
mate by men of science. Certainly no harm can arise 
to any mind from a review of the history here collated,* 
as no motive prompts the labor of its compilation but a 
love of useful truth. 

THE AUTHOB. 

Columbian College, Washington, D. C, 
Jan. 1st, 1869. 



CONTENTS 



LETTER I. 

Sympathy for the Inquirer. — Repulsive Replies of some. — Hint 
in College Days. — Future Study of the Ancients. — No Fact 
Explained. — Science only Classifies. — Spiritual Knowledge 
most Limited. — Three Developments in "Spiritual Rappings." 
— The "Tapping, Writing and Speaking " Media. — Ob ; #ct, 
to find a General Law 9 



LETTER II. 

The Intermediate Agent between Matter and Spirit. — Allusions 
of the Ancients to it. — From Franklin's Day to Herschel's sup- 
posed to be Electricity. — The Nervous Principle as now under- 
stood. — Akin to Electricity. — Mode of its Action. — Exces- 
sive, Deficient, and Equable Development 16 

LETTER III. 

Possible Principles an Illustration. — The Nervous Principle pos- 
sibly has the Laws of Electricity and Magnetism. — Electricity 
affects the Senses; so the Nervous Principle. — Impression 
varies with Constitution. — Three Classes seen in Joan of Arc. 
— The Natural of one Supernatural to another. — Electricity 
attracts Objects, and passes over Connected Conductors; and so 
may the Nervous Principle. — Report of the Royal Academy on 
Mesmerism. — " A Special Agent." — This the Nervous Princi- 
ple. — Statement of Cuvier. — -The Clairvoyant the Magnetic 
Telegraph of the Inquirer. — Agreement of Prof. Gregory and 
other Mesmerists 26 

i* 




VI CONTENTS. 



LETTER IV. 

Possible Truth guides Practice. — As in a Thunder-storm. — 
Tables moved. — The Nervous Energy a Sufficient Power. — 
"Rappings " not new. — Media, Persons of Nervous Organism. 
— Communications accord with Temperament. — Arm Con- 
vulsed, as the Orator's. — Seraphic Eloquence, as the Excited 
Writer. — Communications of Things Forgotten. — All seen in 
Excited Speaker 36 



LETTER V. 

The Inquiry may be practical soon.— Puritans Men of Strong 
Sense. — Their Precedents. — History of Witchcraft. — Sir 
Matthew Hale. — Three Opinions. — The Facts. — Convulsions. 

— Other Bodily Affections. —Metals attracted. — Objects moved. 

— Rappings. — Wonderful Eloquence. — Mysterious Knowledge, 
or Clairvoyance. — Developments the same as in our Day. — 
Excitements and Impressions of the Age. — Causes, as in Royal 
Academy's Report. — Mather and Brattle agreeing in Princi- 
ple. — The Nervous Principle harmonizes all 45 



LETTER VI. 

No new Suggestion. — Link in the Middle Ages to Ancient Times. 
— Thorough Treatise of that Day. — Magic an Exalted Study. — 
"Soul of the World." — All Spirits Linked. — A Superior Spirit 
can control the Body of a Weaker. — As a Magnet the Spirit 
may attract Material Objects. — Disease Cured. — Power of 
Numbers. — Power of Song. — The Daemon, or Spiritual Princi- 
ple communicating Knowledge. — Aristotle's View. — Excited 
like Magnetism Electricity. — Sword of iEneas. — The Daemon 
nothing but Nervous Excitement. — Virgil's Testimony. — In- 
cense and Drugs excite. — Transformations of Circe and Fasci- 
nations in the Middle Ages. — Wonders we are yet to see. . 59 



CONTENTS. VII 



LETTER VH. 

" Ancient Authors " referred to. — Roman View practical. — 
Modes of seeking Knowledge. — Three Views of Source. — 
Juvenal's Satire, and Horace's "Wit. — Virgil's Allegory, and 
Interpretation of it. — Plutarch. — His Matter of Fact. — Why 
Poetic Oracles ceased. — Why Delphi is silent. — The Nervous 
Exciter failed. — Reason and Religion agreed. — Pliny the 
Naturalist. — "Magical Vanities." — Hold three-fold, meeting 
Bodily, Intellectual, and Moral Want. — Some Shades of Truth. 
— Homer's Spirit called up. — The Naturalist's Conclusion. — 
Galen, the Physician. — Medical View of Indian, Greek, and 
Roman Physicians. — Power of Amulets. — Electric Illustra- 
tions. — The Physician's Conclusion 70 



LETTER VIII. 

Who are " the Ancients." — The Greek Reflective. — Cicero a 
Roman-Greek. — Divination believed in by all the Greek 
Schools. — Facts and Reasonings as in our day. — Source, three- 
fold : Illusion, Corporeal Causes, the Spiritual Medium. — 
Dreams. — Homer, his Spirits. — Nervous Visions. — Hesiod, his 
Chain. — Pythagoras, "Music of the Spheres." — Plato, Inter- 
mediate Principle. — Conclusion as in Later Ages 84 



LETTER IX. 

Champollion's Clues. — Wonders of India. — Serpents charmed 

— Nervous Swoons. — Detecting Thieves. — Man buried a 
Month. — Religious Trances. — Nervous Contest. — Stone raised. 

— Brazen Vessel moved. — Uniform Explanation. — Trial by 
Rice. — "Special Agent." — Fearful Initiation. — Magic an 
Art. — Hindoo Philosophy of Magic. — Serpent Charmers in 
Egypt. — Serpent drawn from Wall. — Goat Charmer. — His- 
tory of Charms. — Magnetizing Magician. — Clairvoyance in 
Egypt. — " Special Agent " universal. — A Law. — Ancient 
History uniform. — Blindfold Somnambule. — Healing by Mag- 
netism. — Phenomena ever the same 93 



VIII CONTENTS 



LETTER X. 

Old Testament "antiquated." — Science reveres Scripture. — Sci- 
ence behind Scripture. — Moses learned. — Eight Forms of 
Egyptian Mystery. — Not behind our Mysteries. — Scripture 
View of these. — Accredit Science. — Daniel among Magi. — 
Abuse of Science condemned. — The True Supernatural. — Ma- 
gician's Testimony. — Magi's Testimony. — Picture of an An- 
cient Medium. — Why Men seek them. — Contrast of Natural 
and Supernatural. — Penalty of Curiosity. — Ancients appre- 
ciated these Things. — Christian Scholar in Egypt. — " Our 
Rock not as theirs." 110 



LETTER XI. 

Christian School in Egypt. — Greek Youth won. — Supernatural 
Revelation needed. — Greek and Roman View. — " Desire of 
all Nations." — Revelation not from Reason. — Not from the 
Spiritual Medium. — Jewish Art in Christ's Day. — Jewish 
Views of Christ's Miracles. — Mysterious Arts of Paul's Day. — 
Compared with Christ's Miracles. — Compared with Paul's Mira- 
cles. — Evil Spirits. — Possessions only in Christ's Day. — Good 
Angels. — No Revelation from them. — Miracles prove Inspira- 
tion. — The Ancients convinced. — All Ages convinced. . 126 

LETTER XII. 

What Use. — Experience shows. — Dangerous Experimenting. — 
Physical and Moral Danger. — Nervous Epidemics. — Excite- 
ment on Spiritual Themes. — Cool Men cannot control it. — 
Avoid Exciting Causes. — Why Observers disagree. — Both 
Right, though differing. — Science a Growth of Ages. — Trained 
Men for the Risk. — Religious Experimenting. — Warning 
from the Past. — "Sure word of Prophecy." — No "Broken 
Cistern." 145 



SUPPLEMENTARY LETTER, Page 157 



tttitt fittl 



THE NATURE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM NOT TO BE 
EXPLAINED. 



" Hoc sum contentus, quod, etiam si quomodo quidque fiat ignorem, quid 
fiat intelligo. Pro omni divinatione idem * * respondebo. * * Quid ! 
de fulgurum vi, dubitare num possunt ? nonne cum multa alia mirabilia, 
tunc illud in primis ? * * Causarum enim ignoratio in re nova mira- 
tionem facit : eadem ignoratio, si in rebus usitatis est, non miramur." — 
Cicero de Divinatione, i.,9, 10, & n., 22. 

[With this I am content, that even if I am ignorant in what way any- 
thing happens, what does happen I know. In reference to every kind of 
divination I will reply the same. What ! can we doubt as to power of 
lightnings ? Is it not so that while there are many other things wonderful, 
this is among the first ? * * For ignorance of causes in a new occurrence 
produces wonder : the same ignorance, if it exists in common occurrences, 
we do not wonder at.] 



Sympathy for the Inquirer. — Repulsive Replies of some. — Hint 
in College Days. — Future Study of the Ancients. — No Fact 
Explained. — Science only Classifies. — Spiritual Knowledge 
most Limited. — Three Developments in " Spiritual Rappings." 
— The "Tapping, Writing and Speaking" Media. — Object, 
to find a General Law. 

My Dear Charles : 

I am glad you have written so freely of your obser- 
vations and inquiries, of your doubts and difficulties, in 
reference to the " Spiritual Rappings." Be assured 
you have one that knows how to sympathize with you ; 
a friend whose own mind has been struggling for years 
through the mist, seeking a rock to stand upon ; and 



10 SYMPATHY FOR THE INQUIRER. 

who, with a shipwrecked comrade's eagerness, delights 
to reach a hand or to fling a rope to the aid of a brother 
yet tossed on the billows of an unsettled faith, and if 
possible to help him to a foot-hold. 

What a pity it is that youth too often doubt the sin- 
cerity or the ability of their elder, and, therefore, more 
experienced, comrades in the voyage of life ! Too often 
the aged and experienced, and even the intelligent and 
learned, do not enter into the mental trials of inquiring 
youth ; they do not give themselves time to come back 
to their own early years, and to recall to mind their own 
days of doubt and uncertainty. Absorbed in their own 
particular pursuits, they listen with but half an ear to 
half the story ; and they have not time nor patience to 
give the reasons of their own instinctive decision, — 
that, though mysterious, there is for these wonders of 
our day a natural though unexplained cause. Some- 
times, also, the man of matured views on these subjects 
replies too abruptly when questioned ; responding with 
one or the other of these two curt declarations, accord- 
ing as his temperament is secular or religious, — "It is 
all humbug" — or, "It is all from the devil" But, 
Charles, do not distrust therefore the heart or the head, 
the feeling or the conviction, of your experienced and 
intelligent friends. They may be hasty in assigning 
the ultimate cause of these phenomena which perplex 
you ; and yet they may be right in the main conviction, 
that there is nothing supernatural in them. 

Nearly twenty years since, the first experiments in 
" Mesmerism " were agitating our community. In the 



88881 



STUDY OF THE ANCIENTS. 11 

city near by our university, lecturers were performing 
nightly ; and one of my own classmates was a successful 
operator. Our scientific professor visited and witnessed 
these exhibitions. Eagerly one morning, when on the 
subject that called it up, did we watch for the views of 
our acute Professor of Physiology. From that morn- 
ing the conviction rested on some of our minds, that in 
all the phenomena relating to spiritual media there is 
the working of a wondrous power in our nature, myste- 
rious, indeed, and unexplained, yet not supernatural. 
It is not delusion nor the devil ; not, on the one hand, 
all deception, nor, on the other hand, a supernatural 
influence wrought by an evil agent. As, in interested 
survey, histories of the past and thrilling scenes in 
other lands have since added their clustering confirma- 
tions, a lengthening chain of past testimonials, and a 
widening web of now witnessed facts, has seemed to 
invest as with the robe and insignia of truth the chance 
thought of the college lecture-room. In every land and 
every age, by men most renowned in science and letters, 
by Franklin and Hale, by Galen, Pliny and Cicero, by 
Plato, Socrates and Zoroaster, as well as by Luke and 
Paul and Moses, mysterious manifestations of the spir- 
itual medium were beheld, wondered at and commented 
on ; and, with an accordance of idea greater than their 
language at first indicates, a cause in the nature of 
things has been suggested. 

You ask, Charles, that the phenomena of the " spir- 
itual rappings" be explained Will you let me remind 
you of two things, before we begin our examination ? 



12 SCIENCE ONLY CLASSIFIES. 

No phenomenon in nature, either in the material or 
spiritual world, ever has been or ever will be explained 
to us while we are in this life. Science itself even 
explains nothing ; it only classifies phenomena, draw- 
ing out the law or order of sequence, according to 
which events occur, but not accounting for the law. 
In the material world facts in many a field of inquiry 
have been grouped and generalized ; but no one fact has 
really been accounted for. Every plant now growing 
is every hour taking up from the soil through its roots, 
and in from the air through its leaves, chemical ingre- 
dients, with which it is building itself up ; actually 
creating, every moment, particles of matter into root, 
stalk, leaf and flower. Everybody sees it ; science 
classifies the phenomena ; but who ever thinks of 
explaining the process ? In the fields of spiritual 
investigation, in mental science, how much less has 
been accomplished ! While every year some new prin- 
ciple of material things is discovered, or some new appli- 
cation of natural law is made to the arts of human life, 
philosophers in their examination of our spiritual being 
seem to have noted no more facts, to have fixed no 
more settled conclusions, to have demonstrated no more 
positive laws, than were known and recorded by the 
ancient wise men of Greece and Rome, and even of 
India and Egypt. Expect not, then, my young friend, 
that the " spiritual rappings" will be explained to 
you. There are limits to human knowledge. A very 
Newton has to stop on the shore even of material inves- 
tigation, and he must be content to be but a boy picking 



HmilllHIIIHHIII I fllflll l l ll ll l l ll l l lll l lM^ 



SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE LIMITED. 13 

up a few pebbles, while the whole ocean of truth lies 
unexplored beyond. And as to researches in the spir- 
itual world, that is plunging beneath the surface, into 
the ocean, where we have no eye to see with. God has 
hidden all these dark depths from us, now creatures of 
sense, meaning that the study shall in another life have 
a freshness of interest ; when his own Son's promise 
will be realized, " What thou knowest not now, thou 
shalt know hereafter." Bear in mind, then, if we can 
but trace in human nature, in other ages and nations, 
developments similar to these of the spiritual rappings, 
if we can see enough in them to satisfy ourselves 
that they are not sz^er-natural, but natural, that 
they are not communications from disembodied spirits, 
but mysterious yet universal workings of our own 
spiritual and nervous organism, we shall have arrived 
at all which even science can hope to attain. 

It is the " spiritual rappings " in which you are 
interested, and which you wish explained. You are 
aware, however, that this term was applied to the first 
development of the mysterious agency, whose working 
is now so extensively observed and wondered at. It 
has now come to be synonymous with the wider expres- 
sion, spiritual communications. There are now thought 
to be three distinct modes of communication with disem- 
bodied spirits. There is the tapping (or rapping) me- 
dium ; through which communications are supposed to 
be given by taps on a table ; two or three successive 
indicating assent, or the presence of a spirit ; particular 
messages being received by the inquirer's touching suc- 
2 



14 A GENERAL LAW TO BE SOUGHT. 

cessively the letters of the alphabet printed on a card, 
noting those when touched which are responded to by 
the tappings, and writing down such letters in order, 
until words and sentences are thus obtained. There is, 
again, " the writing medium," the man or woman 
influenced seeming to lose control of the right arm, when 
the pen or pencil is taken ; and the hand being driven 
up and down and over the paper in confused scrawls, or 
in irregular letters and lines, making out intelligible or 
unintelligible words and sentences. There is, finally, 
" the speaking medium," the person influenced being 
lost in a swoon or trance, and then uttering strange and 
unaccountable sentiments and expressions. Moreover, it 
is now asserted as the teaching of these media, that 
the scenes of the Salem witchcraft, so called, were the 
attempts of the spirits in another world to make their 
presence known, and to convey communications to the 
living. It is also intimated that they may be found 
to have a connection with other mysterious phenomena 
of a similar nature, which have occurred in the history 
of our race. You will perceive, therefore, that an 
investigation of one branch of this subject requires a 
notice of all its branches, as now they appear; and, 
moreover, a judgment formed as to the developments of 
our day must have reference to those of other days also. 
It will be a thrilling, if not a pleasing adventure, to 
travel over the past, tracing back sometimes through 
the obscure by-paths of ancient history the footprints 
marked by the feet of men long gone from earth. It 
will be instructive to seek out some general law, deep- 



IP A LAW NOT SUPERNATURAL. 15 

seated and universal in human nature, which may make 
these mysterious and now appalling developments to 
appear the familiar though unexplained occurrences of 
other lands and ages ; developments which need not be 
either dreaded or trusted, as the communications of evil 
or of good spirits, unseen around us ; but which may be 
admired as God's wondrous gift to us whom he has fear- 
fully and wondrously made ; a gift to be studied with 
humility, and to be experimented upon with caution. 



tilttt inrntL 



THE EXISTENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, AND ITS 
EXCESSIVE, DEFICIENT, OR EQUABLE DEVELOPMENT. 



" Quae omnia, si a nobis non videantur, non creduntur ; sed tentata cer- 
tificant. Quorum enim actio ex proprietate est, rationibus unde sit, com- 
prehendi non potest. Rationibus autem tantum comprehenduntur, quae 
sensibus subministrantur. Aliquand' ergo quaedam substantiae habent 
proprietatem ratione incomprehensibilem propter sui subtilitatem, sensibus 
non submininistratum propter magnam sui altitudinem." — Galen on the 
Power of Incantation in Healing* 

[All which things, unless they are seen by us, they are not believed. For 
the action of these influences is from a property the principles of whose 
origin we cannot comprehend. In their principles, indeed, only those things 
are comprehended which affect the senses. Sometimes, therefore, certain 
substances have a property in its principle incomprehensible, on account 
of its subtilty, not affecting the senses because it is so deep seated.] 

" Of the nature of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the 
nature of light and of electricity ; but with its properties we are nearly as 
well acquainted as with those of light, or other imponderable agents." — 
Mailer's Physiology. 



The Intermediate Agent between Matter and Spirit. — Allusions 
of the Ancients to it. — From Franklin's Day to Herschel's sup- 
posed to be Electricity. — The Nervous Principle as now under- 
stood. — Akin to Electricity. — Mode of its Action. — Excessive, 
Deficient, and Equable Development. 

My Dear Charles: 

Let me, at this stage of our inquiry, recall to you 
some acknowledged principles of physiology and of men- 
tal science, as to the medium by which our spirits are 
united to our bodies, and as to the excessive, deficient 
or equable action of the one upon the other. 

There is, so say physiologists, a medium by which 



THE INTERMEDIATE AGENT. 1$ 

soul and body are united and act on each other ; an 
intermediate agent, neither spirit nor matter, through 
which the mind controls the various members of the 
body, and by which the bodily senses convey their 
impressions to the secret soul. When I will to grasp an 
object with my hand, some mysterious agent runs from 
the mind's laboratory in the brain, and coursing along 
the nerves, like the electric fluid along the telegraph 
wires, contracts muscle after muscle, just at the instant 
of time, and up to the precise extent, demanded for the 
successful movement. How obedient and dutiful a ser- 
vant that mysterious messenger, thus prompt to do my 
bidding ! How mighty the power which can cause a 
cord of muscular fibres so to shrink as to draw up a 
hundred pounds weight ! I ought to be prepared to see 
wondrous movements and wondrous powers exhibited, 
when a peculiar excitement wakes it to action. 

As to the nature and properties of this mysterious 
agent even the ancients wrote ; and men in the old and 
eastern climes have known more of its secret powers than 
we have learned. 

As early as the time of the first great Greek physi- 
cian, Hippocrates, who lived 430 years before Christ, the 
intermediate agent was virtually recognized under the 
name Quais, from which our word physical is derived. 
To this all the movements of the body were ascribed ; a 
sort of intelligence even being attributed to it. 1 Pure 

1 See " An Elementary System of Physiology, by John Bos- 
tock, M.D., F.R.S., &c. Boston, 1825." Vol. I., Introd. pp. 
2 — 4; also chap, iv., § 2, p. 201. 

2^ 



18 



HIPPOCRATES 



DESCARTES. 



sph\t was distinguished from this under the name yvyrj ; l 
showing that even the early Greek mind recognized an 
agent intermediate between spirit and matter ; to which, 
as we shall see, the mysteries of the " spiritual medium " 
were referred. 2 Aristotle three hundred and eighty- 
four years before Christ, and Galen, one hundred and 
thirty-one years after Christ, followed up the suggestion 
of their earlier leader. The Romans made a similar 
distinction between the words anima and animus, when 
used in contrast. 3 The former was with them an inter- 
mediate principle between matter and spirit ; and to it, 
as we shall see, they referred, to a certain extent at 
least, the phenomena which even now are mysterious. 4 
Descartes revived this theory; and from his day the 
doctrine of " the animal spirits " was regarded a feature 
of the philosophy called " Cartesian" As Bostock 
remarks, " About two centuries ago everything that 
could not be otherwise explained was referred to the 
agency of some kind of refined spirit." 5 Yet, before his 
day, so universal in the east was the belief in an inter- 
mediate agent through spirit which acted on matter, that 
it formed the very basis of the famed Jewish system 
called the " Cabbala ; " the Hebrew name " Sephiroth " 
being used to express those intermediate principles which 



1 See Leverett's Latin Lexicon, under anima. 

2 See Letter viii., pp. 87, 92. 

3 Leverett's Lexicon, on these words, with his quotations from 
Pliny, Juvenal, Seneca, Cicero, &c. ; also Bostock's Physiol., vol. I., 
p. 4. 

4 See Letter vi., pp. 62, 66; vn., pp. 77, 83. 

5 Bostock's 1 'lysiol., vol. i., chap, iv, § 2, p. 201. 



ELECTRICITY THE AGENT. 19 

run through the universe, having their masculine and 
feminine, or active and passive ; by which man's soul is 
united to his body, by which God operates on matter, 
and by which man gains a knowledge of God. 1 

Since Franklin discovered the laws of electric phe- 
nomena, and Galvani observed how the magnetic fluid 
contracts the muscles, physiologists have made the 
medium by which the mind acts on the body a special 
study. The results of the investigations made up to 
about twenty years ago Herschel thus stated : 

" Among the remarkable effects of electricity dis- 
closed by the researches of Galvani and Yolta, perhaps 
the most so consisted in its influence on the nervous 
system of animals. The origin of muscular motion is 
one of those profound mysteries of nature which we can 
scarcely venture to hope will ever be fully explained. 
Physiologists, however, had long entertained a general 
conception of the conveyance of some subtle fluid, or 
spirit, from the brain to the muscles of animals, along 
the nerves ; and the discovery of the rapid transmission 
of electricity along conductors, with the violent effects 
produced by shocks, transmitted through the body, on 
the nervous system, would very naturally lead to the 
idea that this nervous fluid, if it had any real existence, 
might be no other than the electrical. But, until the 
discoveries of Galvani and Yolta, this could be only 
looked upon as a vague conjecture. The character of a 
vera causa was wanting, to give it any degree of rational 

1 See Bibliothoca Sacra, July, 1852, art. vn. 



20 THE TORPEDO. 

plausibility, since no reason could 6e imagined for the 
disturbance of the electrical equilibrium in the animal 
frame, composed as it is entirely of conductors ; or, rather, 
it seemed contrary to the then known laws of electrical 
communication to suppose any such. Yet one strange 
and surprising phenomenon might be adduced indicative 
of the possibility of such disturbance, namely, the pow- 
erful shock given by the torpedo^ and other fishes of the 
same kind, which presented so many analogies with 
those arising from electricity, that they could hardly be 
referred to a different source, though, besides the shock, 
neither spark nor any other indication of electrical ten- 
sion could be detected in them. 

" The benumbing effect of the torpedo had been ascer- 
tained to depend on certain singularly constructed organs, 
composed of membranous columns, filled from end to 
end with laminae, separated from each other by a fluid ; 
but of its mode of action no satisfactory account could 
be given, nor was there anything in its construction, 
and still less in the nature of its materials, to give the 
least ground for supposing it an electrical apparatus. 
But the pile of Volta supplied at once the analogies both 
of structure and effect, so as to leave little doubt of the 
electrical nature of the apparatus, or of the power, — a 
most wonderful one, certainly, — of the animal, to deter- 
mine, by an effort of its will, that concurrence of condi- 
tions on which its activity depends. 

"This remained, as it probably ever will remain, mys- 
terious and inexplicable ; but, the principle once estab- 
lished that there exists in the animal economy a power of 



m 



THE NERVOUS PRINCIPLE. 21 

determining the development of electric excitement, capa- 
ble of being transmitted along the nerves, and it being 
ascertained, by numerous and decisive experiments, that 
the transmission of Voltaic electricity along the nerves of 
even a dead animal is sufficient to produce the most vio- 
lent muscular action, it became an easy step to refer the 
origin of muscular motion in the living frame to a simi- 
lar cause ; and to look to the brain, a wonderfully con- 
structed organ, for which no mode of action possessing 
the least plausibility had ever been devised, as the source 
of the required electrical power." l 

The views thus expressed by Herschel have been 
slightly modified since he wrote ; not, however, so as to 
alter at all their practical bearing on our inquiry. Dr. 
Miiller, the great German physiologist, distinguishes 
between animal electricity, which is developed on the 
surface of the body (as in a cat), and the nervous energy 
which is generated in the brain ; his experiments having 
led to a satisfactory conclusion, that the two differ in 
their nature, though not in the general laws of their 
action. Of animal electricity, developed on the surface 
of the human body, he mentions, among others, these 
facts : that in men, who are healthy, it is generally 
positive ; that in women, it is negative oftener than it 
is in men, though no general rule exists ; that it is more 
easily excited in persons of a sanguine temperament, and 
less in those of a phlegmatic disposition ; and that it is 

1 " A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy^ 
by John F. W. Herschel, Esq., A.M., &c. Philadelphia, 1835." 
Part ii., chap, vi., pp. 255, 6 & 7. 




22 THREE CLASHES OF MIND. 

developed in a greater degree in the evening than dur- 
ing the day. 1 The substance of his investigation, as to 
the agent by which the mind acts on the body, is con- 
densed in these sentences at the close of his lengthy 
discussion : " The laws of the action of the nervous 
principle are different from electricity. Of the nature 
of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the 
nature of light and of electricity ; but with its proper- 
ties we are nearly as well acquainted as with those of 
light, and of other imponderable agents." 2 Of the 
manner in which the nervous principle acts he says : 
" The primitive fibres of all the voluntary nerves being 
at their central extremity, all spread out in the brain to 
receive the influence of the will, we may compare them 
as they lie side by side in the organ of the mind, to the 
keys of a piano, on which our thoughts play or strike, 
and thus give rise to currents or vibrations of the ner- 
vous principle in a certain number of primitive nervous 
fibres, and consequently to motions." 3 

By this mysterious union, our minds are thus linked 
to our bodies. Through this medium the mind acts 
upon the body, employing, to a greater or less extent 
the organs of sense to gain spiritual apprehensions. And 
according as the development of this agent has been 
excessive, deficient or equable, in men, so have their 
views of the sources of human knowledge ever varied. 

1 Elements of Physiology, by J. Miiller, M.D.; translated 
from the German, by Wm. Baly, M.D. London, 1838. See 
Introduction. 

^ Miiller's Physiol., B. m., § 1, chap. 3. 
Ibid, B. in., § 3, chap. 1. 



H 



THE REFLECTIVE CLASS, OR OVER-NERVOUS. 23 

How far the mind is dependent on the body has 
always been a question among thinking men. On this 
question mental philosophers have in all ages been 
ranged under three great classes ; according as they have 
regarded the bodily senses alone, or the spirit 's intui- 
tions only, or the union of both these, as the ultimate 
source of our knowledge. 1 In each of these classes, as 
professed adherents to these several views, have been 
ranked in every age and nation the prominent and 
noblest minds. To one or the other of these classes 
have really and practically belonged the mass of men 
in every community and generation, though they never 
have read a book on mental science, nor even have 
imagined that there is any law on which their own 
minds act. 

To the first class generally belong the reflective men 
among the educated ; men who love to live within them- 
selves, communing with their own thoughts, or with one 
of kindred spirit; shrinking from society, where they 
meet so much that is harsh and uncongenial ; and hav- 
ing little to do with the material world, except to admire 
the beauty of its varied scenes and myriad objects, while 
they love not to bend their sinews to draw profit from 
it. To this class belong a numerous band among our- 
merchants, artisans and laborers, whose hands only are 

1 For an exhibition of these three classes among the ancients, 
Hindoos, Greeks, &c, see " Epitome of the History of Philosophy," 
translated from the French by C. S. Henry, D.D. New York, 
1842;" especially pp. 61 and 185. In confirmation of the general 
statement, see Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy, translated 
by H. 0. Wight; 2d series, 2d vol., § 12. 



24 THE DEFICIENT AND EQUABLE. 

employed in their necessary pursuits, while their minds 
are dwelling on principles and laws beyond and above 
their pursuits. It is truth unappreciated by the senses 
such love to contemplate; the mysterious properties, the 
hidden laws which govern nature, the moving causes 
acting in the world of both matter and mind. In 
searching for and deciding upon spiritual truth, there- 
fore, in seeking for knowledge of God and of the spirit- 
world, such minds naturally turn to and rely upon those 
same sources of investigation which they most love to 
employ. They employ and trust their own spiritual 
intuitions. 

To the second class are to be referred the dogmatical 
among the educated, and the merely mechanical among 
business men ; minds which are interested only in their 
own particular pursuits; intellects which demand a 
mathematical demonstration for everything they receive ; 
men who can hardly believe anything, except what they 
themselves or some other credible witness has seen, and 
who, when they think of God and religious things, 
admit nothing but what their parents have taught, or 
their church has maintained, or they themselves have 
scanned on the surface of the word of God. In the 
third class move the mighty phalanx of men who both 
think and act, who both observe and reflect, and whose 
religion is both of the heart and the head. 

Eemark, now, Charles, the conclusions to which we 
are brought bearing on the subject of our investigation. 
There is a spiritual medium. There is an intermediate 
agent by which mind acts on matter, and which is itself 



wmwmmwm 



LAWS OF ELECTRICITY MYSTERIOUS. 25 

neither mind nor matter. This agent, the nervous 
principle, is in this respect to be ranked with the other 
attracting and repelling forces of nature, as the capil- 
lary, gravitating, magnetic, and electrical forces. In 
many of the modes of its operation, it is similar to the 
magnetic and electrical principles ; having probably its 
negative and its positive, an attracting and a repelling 
power, which may either balance each other, or over- 
balance and control one the other. The nervous 
principle is moreover developed together with animal 
electricity; the two being together abundant in persons 
of strongly nervous temperament, and the two being 
developed so as to overcharge the system of the person 
who is under great excitement of body or mind. Know- 
ing, then, Charles, the mysterious powers of electricity 
so long regarded as supernatural, — powers which even 
now are exciting new amazement when seen in the electric 
telegraph, locomotive, &c, — what wonders ought we 
not to be prepared to see in the working of that more 
subtle agent, " the nervous principle " ? 
3 



ttiitt €ljirL 



POSSIBLE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, ILLUSTRATED 
IN "ANIMAL MAGNETISM." 



" In Gallia Druidae sunt ; e quibus ipse Diviaticum Aeduum, hospitem 
tuum laudatoremque cognovi : qui et naturae rationem, quam physiologiam 
appellant, notam esse sibi profitebatur •, and partim auguriis, partim con- 
jectura quae essent futura dicebat." — Cicero de Divinatione. 

[In Gaul are the Druids ; one of whom, Diviaticus the Aeduan, thy guest 
and eulogizer, I myself knew : who professed that a principle of nature 
which the Greeks call physiology was known to himself, and partly by 
auguries, partly by conjecture, he told things which would come to pass.] 

" Of the nature of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the 
nature of electricity 5 but with its properties we are nearly as well 
acquainted as with those of light, and of other imponderables." — Mailer. 



Possible Principles an Illustration. — The Nervous Principle pos- 
sibly has the Laws of Electricity and Magnetism. — Electricity 
affects the Senses ; so the Nervous Principle. — Impression 
varies with Constitution. — Three Classes seen in Joan of Arc. 
— The Natural of one Supernatural to another. — Electricity 
attracts Objects, and passes over Connected Conductors; and so 
may the Nervous Principle. — Report of the Royal Academy on 
Mesmerism. — " A Special Agent." — This the Nervous Princi- 
ple. — Statement of Cuvier. — The Clairvoyant the Magnetic 
Telegraph of the Inquirer. — Agreement of Prof. Gregory and 
other Mesmerists. 

My Dear Charles: 

It would be presumptuous to attempt to theorize 
about an agent whose nature and whose laws the ablest 
physiologists have been able but partially to compre- 
hend. Yet, avoiding that folly, we may with propriety 



8BSS 



POSSIBLE ANALOGY IN AGENTS. 27 

glance at some possible principles which comparison 
suggests, and which experience and history seem to 
attest. They will be but unpretending suggestions ; 
hinted as illustrations, not as explanations, which, if un- 
sound, will harm no one, but which, if only plausible, 
may give us the calm confidence that the mysterious 
spiritual manifestations often beheld are not supernat- 
ural ; they are the natural working of a known though 
uncomprehended intermediate agent. 

If the nervous principle belong to the class of agents 
intermediate between spirit and matter, to which elec- 
tricity and magnetism are referred, why should not the 
one have properties similar to the other, and produce 
like effects ? Certainly it is a probable suggestion ; and 
a long array of facts, extending through the world's his- 
tory, may tend to confirm the supposition to be at least 
plausible. The possibility of such a similarity is enough 
for our purpose. 

Electricity and magnetism, when developed so as to 
surcharge a substance, become appreciable to the bodily 
senses. The sense of sight, of hearing, of taste, of 
smell, and of feeling, and the muscular sense, are all 
affected by their action. Why should it not be thus 
with the nervous principle when over-excited ? The eye 
of the person thus affected may see real visions, and his 
ear hear real sounds ; he may have the actual taste of 
sweet or bitter, and the actual smell of pleasant or un- 
pleasant odors; and his touch may suffer a positive 
pang, and his muscles feel a positive pressure. The 
impression produced on the senses by the action of the 



28 SENSATION FROM NERVOUS AGENT. 

nervous principle may be precisely that which the cor- 
responding material substance would produce. In con- 
firmation of these hints, the following statement of 
Muller may suffice : — " The sensation produced by the 
electric shock is not peculiar to that agent ; it may be 
produced by any strong excitement of the nerves, 
whether mechanical or mental. Kastner relates that in 
writing he frequently sustains slight shocks in the fin- 
gers. Some years ago, when I was laboring under a 
state of nervous excitability, I had this sensation very 
frequently on using the fingers much." l 

The mental impression which this over-action of the 
nervous principle produces on any individual will vary 
according to his intellectual constitution. If he be of 
acute mental organism, belonging to the first of the 
three classes already mentioned, he will regard them as 
supernatural, — actual spiritual manifestations. If he be 
of the grosser, more physical make, his blunt nervous 
susceptibilities may not be affected even in the slightest 
degree like those of his fellow of finer mould ; and he 
will regard the impression of the other as a mere delu- 
sion. The mind of more even balance may appreciate 
both the earthly and the spiritual element ; and will 
refer them to a real but natural influence, produced by 
the intermediate agency of the nervous principle. As a 
clear and striking example of this truth, the interesting 
instance seen in Joan of Arc may be cited. 2 She lived 

1 Miiller's Physiol., translated by Baly, B. in., sect. I., chap. 
Hi., p. 640. 

2 See Histoire de France, par M. Michelet, Paris, 1841 ; Tome 
V. chap. in. 



MENTAL IMPRESSION VARIES. 29 

in the midst of war and of political agitation ; l and, as 
the whole history of mankind shows, any season of 
excitement, especially such excitement as war produces, 
creates a general over-development of the nervous prin- 
ciple ; hence an excess of spiritual manifestations im- 
pressing the senses ; and hence a more than ordinary 
belief in supernatural influences. Joan herself, a person 
of most estimable character, a heroine, whose name is on 
every child's lip in France, as that of Washington is 
in America, the first in patriotism and piety, and the 
first in the hearts of her countrymen, 2 — Joan herself, 
and a class of minds like hers, believed that the visions 
she saw and the voices she heard came from celestial 
beings. 3 The dull, unimpressible brain of her hard- 
working father, and that of others like him, could see 
nothing and feel nothing of those refined influences; 
and he verily thought it all delusion. 4 Minds that 
could appreciate most thoroughly both these elements 
regarded it as a natural though real power, acting upon 
and through the inspired heroine ; a power to be admired 
in certain circumstances, because it accomplishes what 

1 Michelet's Histoire de France, Tom. V., pp. 46, 47. The phil- 
osophic Shakspeare pictures only the strongly excited as seeing 
and hearing ghosts ; the nervous excitement gradually being 
aroused in mind after mind, till many see the same. — See Macbeth 
and Hamlet. 

2 In the Protestant Sabbath-schools of France, when the chil- 
dren are called on to give an example of patriotism, the name of 
" Jeanne d'Arc " will break from every lip. 

3 Michelet's Histoire de France, Tom. V., pp. 50 — 55. 

4 Do., p. 58. 

3# 



30 NERVOUS AGENT PASSING OVEJt. 

well-balanced reason cannot ; a power to be deprecated 
always, since the person who possesses it is powerless in 
all points but one, and if such an affection were preva- 
lent in a body of men, as in the crusading host follow- 
ing Peter the Hermit, only one of the elements of suc- 
cess would be theirs. 

Electricity and the magnetic influence, also, when so 
developed as to surcharge a substance, pass off that sub- 
stance to another placed near them, attracting or repel- 
ling external objects, and imparting to them their mag- 
netic or electrical condition. The magnet attracts iron 
only, and imparts to it its own power, thus controlling 
its magnetic influence. An electrified body attracts 
other substances than iron, as pieces of paper, of wood, 
&c, and imparts to them its power; thus controlling 
their electrical influence. Why, then, may not the ner- 
vous principle pass over, from a person over-charged with 
it, to other bodies and to other persons, so as to attract 
or repel inanimate objects, and to control the nervous 
energies of other animals and persons ? Surely, Charles 
the suggestion is not a merely fanciful one, since the 
animal electricity, developed with the nervous prin- 
ciple, might be expected to exhibit these phenom- 
ena. 

As now we seek to apply these two suggestions of a 
possible analogy between the action of the nervous prin- 
ciple and that of electricity and magnetism, bear always 
in mind, Charles, it is not at all a scientific explanation 
which is attempted. If, however, only a possible illus- 
tration be adduced, it will be enough to show that all 



MESMER AND FRENCH ACADEMY. 31 

the facts of " spiritual manifestations " may some day 
be traced to a natural law of the action of the nervous 
principle. 

When Mesmer, having come in 1778 from Vienna to 
Paris, had for five or six years kept all Paris in an ex- 
citement by his experiments, the king at length appointed 
a commission consisting of five members of the Royal 
Academy l (one of whom, Franklin, was at the same 
day investigating the laws of electricity), and four mem- 
bers of the faculty of Medicine, to visit, witness, and 
report upon his exhibitions. The experiments of Mes- 
mer in their presence seem not to have been as success- 
ful as ordinary ; for there is a natural disturbing influ- 
ence which every new discoverer and inventor experi- 
ences, when first meeting so trying an ordeal. Dr. 
Franklin thought lightly of Mesmer's experiments 
before he viewed them ; and of their practical value his 
opinion remained unchanged afterwards. 2 Yet the 
commission, in their elaborate report, allow that in what 
they witnessed there was something that seemed the 
working of a mysterious agent. They reduced Mesmer's 
exhibitions to four classes : — First, those which could 
be explained on physiological grounds ; second, those 
which were contrary to the laws of magnetism ; third, 
those where the imagination of the mesmerized person 
was the source of the phenomena; and fourth, facts 
which led them to admit a special agent (" un agent 

1 The five members were Le Roy, Bailly, De Bery, Lavoisier, and 
our countryman, Benjamin Franklin. 

2 See Works cf Franklin, Sparks' edition, vol. x., pp. 75, 76. 



32 NERVOUS AGENT THE SOURCE. 

particulier ").? One of the Medical Commission became 
a convert to Mesmer's views. The intelligent observers 
of that day testified to cases of a magnetic control and 
of clairvoyance, similar to those witnessed in our times. 2 
About the year 1825, the medical faculty at Paris 
began to institute new inquiries, continuing their inves- 
tigations till 1831. As an indication of the present 
interest of men of science, Reichenbach, in Germany, and 
Gregory, professor of chemistry in Edinburgh, have 
written extended and labored volumes. 

Since, then, it is universally admitted, and has been 
from Franklin's day, that a special mysterious agent, 
like to electricity, yet different from it, is seen acting in 
the familiarly known experiments in " animal magnet- 
ism," why should it seem visionary in this day, when 
so much is known of the action both of animal electric- 
ity and of the nervous principle, to refer these phenom- 
ena to the sufficient though unexplained natural cause 
already considered ? 3 Miss Harriet Martineau (whose 
reading on this subject certainly will not be called in 
question) cites Cuvier as saying of animal magnetism : 
" However the effects produced upon persons yet without 
cognizance before the operation commences, those which 

1 See the French " Encyc'opedie Methodique ;" dept. "Phy- 
sique," art. "Magnetisme." 

2 See London Family Library, vol. lxiii., p. 362, et seq. 

3 This is virtually the view of scientific writers on this subject. 
See " Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism, by 
Wm. Gregory, M.D., F.R.S.E., Prof, of Chemistry in the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh, 1851." Also the same author's translation of 
Reichenbach. 



cuvier's testimony. 33 

take place after the same operation has caused them to 
lose cognizance, and those which animals display, leave 
little doubt that the proximity of two animate bodies in 
certain positions, and with a certain movement, has a real 
effect independent of all participation of the imagina- 
tion of one of the two. It appears equally clearly, also, 
that the effects are due to some communication which is 
established between their nervous systems." l 

With such authority as this to sanction it, it is not 
presumptuous to hint the following illustration of a pos- 
sible law. Since one class of persons (healthy males) 
are known to be positively electric, and another class 
(delicate females) are known to be negatively electric, 
and since in their nervous energies there may be the 
same difference, when by the naturally exciting manipu- 
lations each is charged like a Ley den jar, why should 
there not be between the two a mutual attraction, in 
which the stronger will control the movements of the 
weaker ? 

Moreover, since my nervous fluid, like an electric 

1 Miss Martineau's Letters on Mesmerism, No, v., p. 19. 
(" Cependant les effets obtenus sur des personnes deja sans connais- 
sanee avant que 1 'operation commencat, ceux que ont lieu sur les 
autres personnes apres que i'operation meme leur a fait perdre 
connaissance, et ceux que presentent les animaux, ne permettent 
gueres de douter que la proximite de deux corps animes dans cer- 
taines positions et avec certain mouvements n'ait un effet real, 
independant de toute participation de 1 'imagination d'une des 
deux. II parait assezi clairement aussi que les effets sont dus a 
une communication quelconque qui s'etablit entre leurs systemes 
nerveux." (Anatomie Comparee, Tome n., p. 117. D'u system 
nerveux considere en action.") 



34 inquirer's thought telegraphed. 

current, courses along the nerves leading from the brain, 
enters and controls the muscles of my mouth, and causes 
my lips to utter my thought, why may it not be, when 
I am put in communication with a mesmerized person, 
whose personal control over her nervous energy has been 
overpowered by another, and that nervous energy is left 
to be subject to the control of any one put in nervous 
connection with her, — why may it not occur that my 
nervous energy shall pass over, as electricity on con- 
nected telegraphic wires, to her frame, so as to control 
her lips ; and thus, when I am expecting the reply from 
her mouth, and unconsciously directing my nervous 
energy to her lips, through them I may speak out my 
own thought by an operation as purely mechanical as 
when I send my thought over the telegraph wires to be 
spoken out from a distant machine ? I think, Charles, 
that no instance of clairvoyance can be found in which 
the thought uttered by the clairvoyant may not be 
traced directly over to the mind of the person put in 
communication with her. Thoughts of which I am con- 
scious, facts that I once knew but did not recall at the 
moment (though in the mind, and capable of being 
recalled under mental excitement), imaginations I have 
conceived, and perhaps mental impressions of mine of 
which I am unconscious, — all these do thus speak out 
of the lips of the clairvoyant ; but nothing else, I think 
we have good authority for saying. In the long list 
of cases cited by Prof. Gregory of Edinburgh, (perhaps 
the ablest man of science who has written in the 
English language on this subject) there is scarcely one 



MESMERISTS ALLOW THIS. 35 

that cannot readily be explained on this principle. 1 In 
the instance of the Bolton clairvoyant, 2 who described 
in England what a certain person in California was en- 
gaged in on a certain day, the distance and the lapse of 
time before the verification is too great to give any 
assurance. The reading of the clairvoyant with ban- 
daged eyes may seem an exception ; but it is not, if any 
person in the company is overlooking what is read, or is 
even familiar with it. Let a well-attested case be pre- 
sented, one which could any day be furnished, if such an 
one could be given, and it should be received. Yet so 
generally admitted is the fact that in clairvoyance nothing 
but the thought of persons in communication with the 
clairvoyant is reported, that Miss Martineau herself has 
remarked, " It is almost an established opinion, among 
some of the wisest students of Mesmerism, that the mind 
of the somnambule mirrors that of the Mesmerist." 3 

1 See Gregory's Letters, Nos. vi., vn., vin., especially. 

2 See Gregory, Letter xvi., p. 408. 

3 See Miss Martineau's Letters, No. in., p. 11 



ttiiti /nttrtjj* 



POSSIBLE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM ILLUSTRATED 
IN THE " SPIRITUAL RAPPINGS." 



" Haec autem ego non tentavi ; sed nee etiam neganda sunt mihi ; quia 
si non viderimus magnetem sibi ferrum trahentem, non certificamur, nee 
crederemus. Similiter quod * * piscis quidam marinus se capientis 
sensum aufert." — Galen on the Employ of Incantation in Healing: 

[These things, indeed, I have not tested ; but neither, indeed, are they 
denied by me •, because, if we have not seen the magnet attracting iron, we 
are not certain of it, neither should we believe it. In like manner that a 
certain fish should take away the feeling of him seizing it.] 



Possible Truth guides Practice. — As in a Thunder-storm. — 
Tables moved. — The Nervous Energy a Sufficient Power. — 
"Rappings " not new. — Media, Persons of Nervous Organism. 
— Communications accord with Temperament. — Arm Con- 
vulsed, as the Orator's. — Seraphic Eloquence, as the Excited 
Writer. — Communications of Things Forgotten. — All seen in 
Excited Speaker. 

My Dear Charles : 

Shall we hazard an application of these principles to 
the phenomena called the " spiritual rappings " ? Bear 
in mind, Charles, the suggestion is not hinted at all as 
a scientific explanation ; to such presumption it would 
be folly to pretend. But, in the known and acknowl- 
edged mysterious phenomena produced in us by the 
nervous influence, may we not see enough to assure us 
it is that influence, not the communications of spirits 



POSSIBLE LAW RULES PRACTICE. 37 

disembodied, which we see working. Less than a cen- 
tury ago, Franklin was first making his noble experi- 
ments in electricity, which proved satisfactorily to all 
thinking men that the bolts of heaven were no super- 
natural uncontrollable power, but a natural agent, which 
could be guided with an iron rod away from our ex- 
posed heads. Certainly it would have been presump- 
tion in a mere novice in that study to have attempted 
to theorize on any phenomena witnessed. Yet, bear wit- 
ness, it would not have been presumption, it would have 
been sound discretion and commendable boldness, if 
even a common observer had stepped forward in the cir- 
cle of his friends, awed by the terrible peals of a thunder- 
storm, and had said, " Friends, be we trustful and fear- 
less ; we may not explain the terrific agent rending the 
heavens and earth around us, but we may be sure it is 
a natural agent, which we should not dread." So, too, 
may not the spiritual phenomena, so mysterious and 
even awing, seen around us now, be surely referred to 
the action of our own nervous organism, though no 
scientific explanation be attempted ? 

Tables are moved by a mysterious power, when a cir- 
cle of interested spectators, with a medium, are seated 
around it. But remark this, Charles. Stretch forth 
your arm, and grasp a heavy weight and raise it. How 
mighty that power put forth ! Trace it back to its 
origin, and how wonderful ! You willed to perform 
that act. Instantly in your brain, as in a Ley den jar, 
a nervous influence was generated, which, coursing along 
your nerves as on metallic wires, entered your muscles • 
4 



38 



M0VIN&S AND RAPPINGS. 



and there the mere shrinking of the fibres of a little 
muscle, the shortening of a small cord, drew up the large 
weight in }^our hand. How immeasurable, how unac- 
countable, such a power ! And now think of that circle 
around the table. When they first sit calmly down, no 
movement is seen ; none can be produced. But when 
for a few moments in intense mental action, a nervous 
energy has been generated in the frame of each, until, 
like a circle of Leyden jars, a whole battery is sur- 
charged, and there are negatives as well as positives in 
the circle, who can wonder if currents of nervous influ- 
ence should leap over from one to the other, and if 
tables, chairs, or anything else intervening, should be 
moved ? We should not wonder at any phenomena 
which might show themselves under such circumstances. 
We should only fear that, like inexperienced experi- 
menters in electricity, we should thoughtlessly inflict 
upon ourselves an incurable injury. Our kind Creator 
has given me this mighty and wondrous nervous agency 
to be carefully used as the steady mover of my body's 
machinery. If I overcharge myself with it, if I strain 
the vital organs which generate it, I may weaken my 
own energies for life. 

Mysterious rappings give response to our thoughts, 
uttered or merely conceived, as we sit around the table. 
This, however, is not a new exhibition of what we must 
regard an over-excitement of our own nervous energy. 
These raps are in nature not unlike those electric crack- 
ings heard amid the whizzing bands of factory wheels, 
and the electric snapping heard in cold weather from the 



MEDIA AND RESPONSES. 39 

skin of animals when stroked, and from our person in 
drawing off a woollen under-garment. Physiologists and 
ordinary historians have recorded numberless instances 
of these electric-like shocks and reports experienced by 
persons of an excitable nervous temperament. 1 

Moreover, Charles, reflect a moment on the character 
of the media, and on the nature of the communica- 
tions given, and see if you can believe that spirits in 
another world are the communicators ; see if all does 
not confirm the fact that these responsive rappings are 
the working of our own nervous organism, echoing to 
our own thoughts. We should not disparage at all, 
we wish not to do so, the character of those who 
are generally the media. We allude not to the fact 
that they are generally young, and inexperienced, and 
females. But observe simply this fact : they are just 
that class whom we ordinarily speak of as persons of a 
high nervous temperament, of an acute mental organism. 
It is the very class of persons in whom the nervous 
principle is active, from whom we seem to see the nerv- 
ous energy thus flowing off. The communications 
received, also, seem to correspond to the character of 
the inquirer ; indeed, to be the echo of his or her 
thought. Is the company lively, cheerful, if not humor- 
ous ? Little Willie, familiarly called, responds, and 
he asks for his favorite song or waltz ; and " the Colo- 
nel," laughingly asked for, echoes his presence by drum- 
ming a loud march on the shaking table. Is the com- 

1 See Muller, as quoted Let. Third, p. 28 ; Let. Fifth, pp. 49 
—51. 



40 ARM CONVULSED. 

pany grave, spiritually if not religiously inclined ? The 
responses are in keeping ; and the inquirer's own favor- 
ite, be he Swedenborg, Channing or Wesley, is endorsed 
and canonized. Now, not at all because these differing 
religious views are responded to, can we object to these 
communications. But, where the sentiment expressed 
is ever, in its moral tone, in keeping with that of the 
inquirer, seems it not to indicate that the response is 
the echoing of our own mental organism, the telegraphic 
rapping out of our own electric-borne thought ? 

The arm, again, is convulsed and unmanned ; and, 
with spasmodic, rapid and uncontrollable force, it writes 
disjointed or connected sentences. The mere spasmodic 
action of the muscles here seen is not new, or at all pecu- 
liar. Who has not felt it when under intense excite- 
ment, either of fear or anxiety, or in deep thought? 
when, instinctively we rise and walk the room, that the 
overcharged nervous influence may have work to expend 
itself upon, a channel over which to pass off. The 
true orator is always more or less under its power ; the 
movement of his quivering fingers and arm, and of his 
whole agitated frame, and even the grand and almost 
seraphic roll of his periods and movement of his thought, 
showing that he is, beyond himself, moved by a power 
self-excited, indeed, but now, in a measure, beyond his 
control. Schiller and Shelley, and such minds as theirs, 
always have written under such an influence. Witness 
what, as we have already noted, the physiologist M til- 
ler says of himself. Yet, after all, who knows not that 
only his own train of thought, though at the time he 






THE TEST EASY. 41 

be unconscious of it, and now, when the excitement has 
passed off and he sees it in manuscript, he can hardly 
believe it his, yet only his own thought has come from 
his pen or his tongue. The most unlettered man or 
woman, excited by stimulated appetite or passion, by 
intoxicating drink, or by fear, anger or love, talks like 
Gabriel ; and religion is the chief theme. 

Charles, if you are a writing medium, try it, and see 
if it be not so in these new phenomena. Bring a man 
to your table, a part of whose name you know ; and 
when that part is written, ask the spirit whom you may 
imagine guides your pen to write the other part. Most 
assuredly you will find that only your own knowledge 
will be responded to. Prepared, then, to watch more 
closely your own mind's working, go on and observe the 
other responses you receive. You may not at first be 
able to trace all you write to your own positive knowl- 
edge, your once known and forgotten, but in that mo- 
ment of intense mental action remembered thought and 
realized imaginings. But, if you do not, be assured you 
have, in the orator and the writer, carried by their own 
mental action, — you have in them those who can sym- 
pathize. No man, under such circumstances, utters or 
writes anything but his own thought ; but, how that 
expressed or written thought came into his mind, and 
became his, no great speaker or writer can explain. It 
is to him as real a wonder as can be the pencillings of 
the spiritual medium. 

Once, again, the reporting medium mentions facts 
and thoughts, or imaginings, which are not in her own 
4# 



42 EXCEPTIONS ONLY APPARENT. 

mind, but in that of the inquirer. She receives by the 
rappings, or she writes with the pen, or she utters with 
the voice, not her knowledge, or surmise, or impression, 
but that which belongs to the mind of him put in com- 
munication with her. He asks the name of a friend of 
his own, the date of his birth, &c. ; and facts known 
only to himself, and perhaps not recalled even by his 
own mind at the moment, are accurately given. He 
asks about the present state of a sick friend's health, 
or the locality of a lost or stolen piece of property ; and 
his surmise — sometimes, of course, right, but oftener 
wrong — is expressed by the medium. If any other com- 
munication than these, Charles, has ever come from a 
clairvoyant or a spiritual medium, candidly should we 
acknowledge it ; and, as lovers of truth, we should not 
only cheerfully, but with pleasure, receive the testimony 
of it. 

Cases, indeed, are reported, in which inquirers have 
been informed, by the medium, of circumstances in the 
lives of relatives of theirs, and of other facts, of which 
they suppose themselves never before to have had knowl- 
edge. But three things are here to be borne in mind. 
Even if our supposition as to the source of these responses 
be correct, it is not to be expected that all the facts can at 
once be classified. Every right theory in science, after 
being first started, though sound in the main, must go 
stumbling on for years, now modified here, and now 
revised there, as new facts, slightly different, come to 
be ranged under it. 

Yet again ; who can say certainly that any fact which 



REPORT OUR OWN THOUGHT. 43 

is thus reported from the medium never was known to 
him ? We remember the famous case of the servant- 
girl in England, who, during a sickness which affected 
the brain, repeated accurately passages of the Bible in 
Hebrew ; and when the secret of this apparent miracle 
was traced out, it was found that in early life she had 
lived in the family of a clergyman, whom she had often 
heard repeating Hebrew ; and, although never a word 
had been comprehended, or even remembered, so as to 
be uttered by her, it was all lodged in her mind, and it 
was her own knowledge, which, under nervous excite- 
ment, came echoing from her lips, all unconsciously to 
herself. Who knows what facts, casually mentioned in 
his hearing in childhood, entirely uncomprehended and 
not noted in memory, are yet fast adhering in his men- 
tal organism ; and who can say, positively, that the 
mysterious communications of the spiritual " medium ' 
are not those deep-hidden impressions brought out under 
a strong nervous excitement ? Such responses cannot 
be test cases ; for in them there is, at least, uncertainty. 
But, what is more to the point, if anything else than 
what is already in the mind of the inquirer can come from 
the medium's tongue or pen, why may not a test case be 
given ? Easily, indeed, could such an undisputed case be 
tried ; a case where no doubt could enter. For instance, 
let a clairvoyant be called on to describe any scene pass- 
ing at the present moment in a distant place, knowledge 
of which could not be in the mind of either party; and let 
some person at the same time, in that distant place, keep 
an accurate record, to be compared afterwarls with the 



44 MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAPH. 

report of the medium. But never has it been my fortune 
to hear of such an instance. The communications of 
the clairvoyant and of the spiritual medium, as to facts 
that can be tested, have been only the knowledge, remem- 
bered or forgotten, and the surmise, right or wrong, 
of the person consulting. 

That, by a united current of two persons' nervous influ- 
ence, the thought of one should pass over, and be rapped, 
written or spoken, out by another, is mysterious; but it 
is no more mysterious than that, by a connection of elec- 
tric conductors, and by an excitement of the electric prin- 
ciple, I can control the electric influence of a series of 
electric conductors, reaching from New Orleans to Bos- 
ton, and have my thought rapped or written out a thou- 
sand miles from the point where I exert the energy. It 
is not supernatural ; and more, it is neither unnatural 
nor unaccountable. Moreover, that the unremembered 
thought of the inquirer should be thus expressed, has its 
counterpart in the experience of every excited speaker 
and writer. Finally, that these communications should 
be almost entirely of a religious character is natural ; 
for we know that in all mental excitements the religious 
sensibilities are most exercised. 



tilht /tft|r. 

POSSIBLE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM ; ILLUSTRATED 



u He denied absolutely that there was, or could be, such a thing as witch- 
craft, in the current sense." — Burroughs, quoted by Bancroft. 

" Witchcraft seems to be the skill of applying the plastic spirit of the 
world unto some unlawful purposes.'' — Cotton Mather. 

" The Salem justices are so well instructed in the Cartesian Philosophy , 
that they undertake to give a demonstration how this touch does cure the 
afflicted persons." * * * "These afflicted persons do say, and often 
have declared, that they can see spectres when their eyes are shut, as well 
as when they are opened. This one thing I evermore accounted as very 
observable, and that which might serve as a good key to unlock the nature 
of these mysterious troubles, if duly improved by us." — Brattle. 



The Inquiry may be practical soon. — Puritans Men of Strong 
Sense. — Their Precedents. — History of Witchcraft. — Sir 
Matthew Hale. — Three Opinions. — The Tacts. — Convulsions. — 
Other Bodily Affections. — Metals attracted. — Objects moved. — 
Rappings. — Wonderful Eloquence. — Mysterious Knowledge, or 
Clairvoyance. — Developments the same as in our Day. — Ex- 
citements and Impressions of the Age. — Causes, as in Royal 
Academy's Report. — Mather and Brattle agreeing in Princi- 
ple. — The Nervous Principle harmonizes all. 

My Dear Charles : 

Our inquiries thus far may seem to have related to 
matters of mere curiosity; a decision in reference to 
which, either way, will be of no practical vame. May it 
prove so. There are scenes of by-gone days, however, 
that speak their warning. When noble young Brattle, 



46 puritans' strong sense. 

distinguished by university honors in Old England, a 
youth of ingenuous spirit, and sympathizing heart, and 
of strong native sense, sat writing in the very midst of 
the terrible Salem excitement and executions, and 
penned the sentence read above, happy would he have 
been if " the key " had already been found to " unlock 
the nature of these mysterious troubles." 

They were men of strong sense who lived in those 
times. As Palfrey has remarked, " To hold an opinion 
entertained by Sir Edward Coke and Sir Matthew Hale, 
while enjoying no better opportunities for correcting it, 
is not to incur the reproach of any extraordinary dulness 
of intellect." l Mather, in illustration, records that 
" the Justices and Judges " " consulted the Precedents 
of former times, and Precepts laid down by learned 
writers about witchcraft ; as Keeble on the Common 
Law, chap. Conjuration (an Author approved by the 
Twelve Judges of our Nation) ; also, Sir Matthew Hale's 
Trials of Witches, printed An. 1682 ; Glanvil's Collec- 
tion of Sundry Trials in England and Ireland, in the 
years 1658, 61, 64 & 81 ; Bernard's Guide to Jurymen ; 
Baxter's & B. B., their Histories about Witches, and 
their Discoveries ; C. Mather's Memorable Providences 
relating to Witchcrafts, printed 1685." 2 Surely the 
opinions of such men must have been based on some- 
thing worthy of investigation ; while the terrible results 

1 Mass. Hist. Collections, vol. xxix. ; Semi-centennial Discourse, 
by John G. Palfrey, delivered Oct. 31, 1844. 

2 Mather's Magnalia, Book vi., Sadduc. debel., § 5; London 
Edit., 1702, p. 80. 



THREE OPINIONS. 47 

flowing from the application of their opinions makes such 
an investigation a demand of humanity. 

A fearful and long history has " Witchcraft " had. 
Noticed in yet earlier times, the first mention of penal 
statutes in reference to it is that of Pope Innocent VIII., 
in 1484. Terrible was the havoc afterwards made. 
At Geneva, during three months of the year 1515, over 
five hundred persons were burned, charged with being 
witches. In the diocese of Como, in Italy, one thousand 
persons were, during one year, put to death on this charge. 
In England, especially under the reigns of Elizabeth and 
James, long and painful is the story of its victims. The 
able and excellent Sir Matthew Hale himself, after a 
protracted and candid examination, carried away by the 
spirit of the age, gave the authority of the highest tri- 
bunal, and of the most exalted powers on the seat of that 
tribunal, to these condemnations. 1 Surely there must 
have been facts unmistakable and indisputable which 
swayed such a mind, and so large a class of minds. 

The three classes of opinions already alluded to as 
universally prevalent among men of all ages and nations, 
in reference to mysteries of the Spiritual Medium, 2 are 
seen illustrated in New England during the reign of the 
" Witchcraft " excitement. Rev. George Burroughs, a 
burly, muscular, portly Englishman, a man all physical, 
when arrested and tried for witchcraft, boldly and abso- 

1 " American Criminal Trials," bj Peleg W. Chandler. Boston, 
1841, vol. i., pp. 67—69. 

2 See Letter Second, p. 23. 



48 mather's facts. 

lutely denied that there could be any such thing. 1 The 
slender and delicate Mather, a close student and full 
of learning, nervous and thoughtful, reflective and im- 
pulsive, the man all spiritual, deemed the mysterious 
manifestations which his senses perceived (though his 
imagination gave them coloring) to be supernatural. 
Calef, 2 the merchant, a man of strong practical sense, 
and Brattle, 3 a cultured scholar and finished lawyer, 
a man of even balance, acknowledged the facts, referring 
some to known causes, and leaving others for future 
investigation to explain or classify. 

Observe we, then, the attested facts, as given by eye- 
witnesses. In collecting these, let us do the justice, even 
to such a man as Mather, as to allow his truth and sin- 
cerity in his own parenthetical declaration: — " Reader, 
I write what hath fallen within my own personal obser- 
vation." 4 Visionary as he might be in theorizing upon 
his observations, as a chronicler of observed facts proba- 
bly no one will call in question his authority, especially 
where his statements are in keeping with those of other 
observers. Perhaps, after a collation and comparison 
of them, we may be surprised at the uniform history of 
the mysterious manifestations of the spiritual medium. 

1 Bancroft's Hist, of IT. States, vol. in., p. 92. 

2 " More Wonders of the Invisible World," by Robert Calef, 
merchant of Boston, in New England. Printed at London, 1700, 
and at Salem, 1796. 

3 Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., written at Boston, Oct. 8, 
1692. Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v. 

4 Mather's Magnalia, Book vr., p. 77. 



BODILY CONVULSIONS. 49 

Violent convulsions of the bodies of those afflicted 
were the first and chief witnessed facts. Every muscle 
would be seen twitching; sharp pangs would dart 
through the limbs, as if the very bones were agonized : 
and the person affected would roll upon the ground, 
start up and leap with unnatural vehemence, and would 
jump and oscillate and bound upward and forward, as if 
furiously riding. 1 The evidence derived from these con- 
vulsions was especially relied upon in trials for witch- 
craft. The afflicted being perfectly free from convul- 
sions, as soon as the person accused with bewitching 
them was brought into the court-room severe spasms 
would come on. The professed witch was often identi- 
fied in this manner. The afflicted person was blind- 
folded, and several persons were caused to touch her in 
succession. At the touch of the accused, the convul- 
sions would instantly cease. Sometimes this failed, 
the convulsions subsiding at the touch of another than 
the accused; a case which gave Sir Matthew Hale a 
check in his confidence, although it did not alter his 
eventual decision. 2 

Other bodily affections were witnessed. Surprising, 
apparently superhuman muscular strength was exhibited 
by persons affected. A strong man could lift a bed- 
stead, bed and man lying on it. 3 On this ground, the 
gigantic Burroughs, though cool and unaffected, was 

1 See Brattle's Letter, and Mather often : especially Magnalia, 
B. vi., p. 74. 

2 American Criminal Trials, vol. I., p. 70. 

3 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 72. 

5 



50 SUBSTANCES MOVED. 

condemned, though his natural power of muscle suffi- 
ciently spoke in its own defence. 1 Pricking sensations 
were often experienced in the flesh, the marks of which, 
as of pinches with the nails, were seen. 2 Sometimes a 
rigidity came over the frame, every joint becoming so 
stiff that it was impossible to bend it. 3 

An attraction of other substances to the flesh of the 
affected, especially of metallic articles, such as pins, 
iron rods, &c, was noted by many witnesses ; and these 
attractions were accompanied with pricking sensations, as 
if the pins pierced the flesh ; 4 although, on examination 
it was found no wound had been inflicted. Violent 
motions in objects around, as if attracted and impelled 
by some mysterious force, were witnessed. A staff, an 
iron hook, shoes, keys, and even a chest, were seen to 
move, as if tossed by an invisible hand. A bed on which 
a sufferer lay shook most violently, even when several 
persons were seated on it. 5 Stones were hurled against 
houses and persons ; articles of iron, pewter and brass, 
were tossed about, a candlestick being thrown down, a 
spit flying up chimney, and a pressing-iron, a stirrup, 

1 Bancroft, vol. in., p. 91. 

2 Mather and Calef often; also, Narrative of Rev. Mr. Turrell, 
of Medford, Mass., in Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. xx., p. 9. 

3 Mather's Mag., p. 72. 

4 Mather's Mag., B. vt., pp. 68, 70, 72 & 79. Cases of this kind 
are common. One occurred about three years since at Washington, 
D. C, and was reported upon by Prof. Page, of the Patent Office, 
in the National Intelligencer. 

5 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., pp. 68, 69, 70 



RAPPINGS AND CLAIRVOYANCE. 51 

and even a small anchor, being moved ; of which facts 
many persons were eye-witnesses. 1 

Mysterious rappings were also heard. Audible 
scratch! rigs on the bedstead of a person affected were 
made. A drumming on the boards was heard ; when a 
voice seemed to say, " We knock no more ! we knock no 
more ! " A frying-pan rang so loud that the people at 
a hundred yards distance heard it. Sounds as of steps 
on the chamber-floor were heard. Divers noises as of 
the clattering of chairs and stools were heard in an 
adjoining room. 2 Yery varied are these instances. 

Wonderful powers of thought and grace of expression 
were exhibited by the most ignorant and uneducated, 
and by persons of ordinary, and even of small mental 
capacity. Of one person it is recorded, " He had a 
speech incessant and voluble, and (as was judged) in 
various languages." Of a little girl it is mentioned, 
" She argued concerning death, with paraphrases on the 
thirty-first Psalm, in strains that quite amazed us." 3 

Cases of mysterious kriowledge, like those now called 
clairvoyance, are reported, even by the coolest witnesses. 
Brattle mentions that " several persons were accused by 
the afflicted whom the afflicted never had known." 4 
Little girls thus affected (as we learn in the early Salem 
troubles, of which Brattle is here speaking) described 

1 " The Stone-throwing Devil," by Richard Chamberline. (See 
copy Cambr. Coll. Library.) London, 1698. 

2 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., pp. 69, 70. 

3 Do., B. vi., pp. 70, 73. 

4 Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., p. 73. 



52 GREEK AND HEBREW READ 

persons they had never seen as their tormentors, and by 
these descriptions their parents or friends sought out the 
accused even in remote places. 1 In mentioning this fact, 
Brattle says that some persons thought that God, and 
others that good angels, communicated with the affected. 2 
Brattle states no personal opinion, although he accredits 
the fact. 2 Brattle also records, " These afflicted per- 
sons do say, and often have declared, that they can see 
spectres when their eyes are shut as well as when they 
are open. This one thing I evermore accounted as very 
observable, and that which might serve as a good key 
to unlock the nature of these mysterious troubles, if duly 
improved by us." 3 Mather also states a fact, and it 
would seem impossible that he could have been deceived, 
on which he relied much, and which has oft been referred 
to as most mysterious. Of one of the little daughters 
of John Goodwin, of Boston, he says, " Perceiving that 
her troublers understood Latin, some trials were there- 
upon made whether they understood Greek and Hebrew, 
which, it seems, they also did ; but the Indian languages 
they did not seem so well to understand." 4 Of Ann 
Cole, Mather says, " Her tongue was improved by the 
Daemon, to express things unknown to herself;" and 
of Elizabeth Knap he writes, " Though she was in 
one of her fits, and had her eyes wholly shut, yet when 

1 Mather's Magnalia, often. 

2 Mass. Hist. Collect,, vol r. s p. 73. 

3 Ibid, pp. 73, 74. 

4 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 75; Bancroft's U. States Hist., 
rol. in., p. 76. 



EXCITING CAUSES. 53 

this innocent woman (the accused) was coming, she 
discovered herself wonderfully sensible of it, and was in 
grievous agonies at her approaches." l 

No one can compare the series of facts thus recorded 
without being struck with their almost entire similarity 
to those of the developments witnessed in our day. 
Even in the lesser details this entire analogy may be 
seen ; as in the rigidity or stiffness of the affected per- 
son's frame, 2 the reported case of one person drawn 
with force up to the ceiling, 3 the bringing of the sick 
to consult these clairvoyant advisers ; 4 and the fact that 
the person in a swoon remembered nothing of the com- 
munications given when in it, her own mind not being 
the actor. 5 

Having glanced thus at the facts of witchcraft, notice 
we the sources to which different classes of minds 
referred them ; and draw we then our own natural 
inferences. 

There was something peculiar in the age and circum- 
stances of the early New England colonists, to create a 
more than usual general nervous excitement. They 
lived in a wilderness ; and the terrors of their dreary 

1 Ibid, B. vi., p. 67. This same fact, that by a nervous shock an 
excited person actually perceives the approach of another, Shak- 
speare alludes to, Macbeth, Act iv., Scene i. ; the witch saying, 

" By the pricking of my thumbs, 
Something wicked this way comes." 

2 Mather's Magnalia, p. 72. 

3 Calef, Letter I., § 8. 

4 Brattle's Letter, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., p. 71. 

5 Hale, quoted by Bancroft, Hist, of U. S., vol. in., p. 91. 

5% 



54 THUNDER SUPERNATURAL. 

abode were heightened, to those delicately brought up in 
Old England, by the popular religious belief, that " evil 
spirits " had been sent, even by Christ himself, to take 
up their abode in " desert places." l They dwelt among 
savage and heathen tribes, whose powaks, like their 
East India fellows, 2 recovered persons afflicted with cer- 
tain diseases by their incantations; and, as Mather confi- 
dently asserts of one, he " could precisely inform such 
who desire his assistance from whence goods taken from 
them were stolen, and whither carried." Seeing in- 
stances of this kind, which, as Mather says, those " who 
have conversed much among them have had no reason 
to question," and referring them to "diabolical agen 
cy," 3 there was, as in the days of Joan of Arc, a natu- 
ral reason not only for a strong belief in the supernat- 
ural, but there was also a natural cause exciting such 
an undue manifestation of the nervous energy as would 
produce the facts leading to that belief. Yet, again, 
living in a forest region, where storms, with a before 
unknown degree of electrical terror, burst in thunder 
and lightning over them, it is worthy of notice, that the 
same class of minds which referred the mysteries of the 
nervous principle seen in witchcraft to supernatural 
causes, — that same class regarded this associate inter- 
mediate agency as supernatural, and under the control 
of evil spirits ; not only Cotton Mather, but other 
minds in that day, being satisfied that Damons con- 

1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., chap, vn., p. 66. 

2 Ibid, B. vi., chap v., § 1, p. 52 ; also, Postscript, p. 59. 

3 Ibid, p. 52, 



PHYSIOLOGICAL SOURCE. 55 

trolled the lightnings, because so many meeting-houses 
were struck by the electric fluid. 1 

A candid examination and comparison would seem to 
indicate the same classification made by Franklin and 
the members of the French academy of the manifesta- 
tions in Mesmer's experiments. There are those for 
which known physiological facts may account. All the 
affections of " the afflicted " were evidently of a nervous 
kind. The subjects were nearly all children, or young 
females of the most ignorant and uncultured class ; 2 
the natural subjects of nervous excitement. The con- 
vulsions were ordinary nervous spasms. Moreover, the 
derangement of the nervous system was plainly seen, and 
described as an attendant of the afflicted person's fit ; 
Brattle remarking that " even the judges saw that the 
brain of the confessors was affected ;" 3 Mather also, again 
and again, alluding to the manifest insanity of many of 
the afflicted ; mentioning of Mrs. Whetford, that after 
being bewitched ten years, she became crazy ; 4 relating 
of the Irish woman, Glover, that five or six physicians 
were appointed by the court to examine if " she were 
in no way crazed in her intellectuals ;" 5 and recording 
of Mr. Philip Smith, that he was conscious beforehand 
that mental derangement was coming on, and requested 

1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., chap, m., pp. 14, 20. 

2 Brattle, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., pp. 75, 77 ; and Mather 
everywhere. 

3 Ibid, vol. v., p. 65. 

4 Mather's Wonders of the Invisible "World, p. 58. 

5 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 72< 



56 " SPECIAL AGENTS." 

his friends to " have a care " of him. 1 There were, 
again, a large class of reported facts for which known 
psychological causes are an explanation. To the influ- 
ence of excited imagination many of the sights, sounds 
and physical impressions felt, must be referred ; the 
impressions on the organs of sense of the persons 
affected being as real as if made by an external object. 
Thus spectres were seen when none appeared to unex- 
cited eyes ; 2 stones of great size were seen and felt to 
strike persons, when no stone was found and no mark 
of a blow left ; 3 and sometimes one portion of a company 
would smell the odor of brimstone, and when others 
around denied that they smelt the same, the affected 
ones would become satisfied that they had been mistaken 
in their impression. 4 

Yet a third class of witnessed facts, allowed by all 
classes, must be referred to that special unknown agent 
which the French savans recognized in Animal Mag- 
netism. And it is worth noting, that among the 
personal observers of all classes there was virtually a 
surprising unanimity on this point. Even blunt George 
Burroughs only denied that there could be any such 
thing as witchcraft "in the current sense." 5 Mather, 
on the other extreme, explained it, as he did the light- 
ning, to be " a skill of applying the plastic spirit of the 

1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi , p. 70. 

2 Brattle and Mather, often. 

3 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 69. 

4 Calef 's Letters, p. 47. 

s Bancroft's U. S., vol. m., p. 92. 



OPINIONS OF THAT DAY. 57 

world ; " l this intermediate agent being simply supposed 
by him to be, in common with the lightning, allowed by 
the Creator to come under the control of dcemons. 
Mather remarks, in reference to the opinions of his day, 
that " many good men " thought there ought not to be 
any condemnations for witchcraft ; and that " they had 
also some philosophical schemes of witchcraft, and of 
the method and manner wherein magical poisons operate, 
which further supported them in their opinion.' ,2 Brat- 
tle, too, early in the troubles, says that there were at- 
tempts to explain these affections "on the Cartesian 
philosophy ;" 3 and it is interesting to observe this, since 
Descartes is the very one to whom the modern theory 
of " the animal spirits," the " nervous principle," or the 
spiritual medium, is referred. 4 

Surely, then, Charles, after such a survey as this, 
who shall say the suggestion is visionary, that possible 
laws of the nervous principle, analogous to known laws 
of electricity (an associate intermediate agency), may be 
the source of these mysterious phenomena ? Glance, 
then, over the list of facts ; and, not at all as a scien- 
tific explanation, but as a just illustration, suppose an 
application of laws of the nervous principle similar to 
the established laws of electricity. Surprising strength, 
rigidness of muscle, and pricking sensations like those 
of a current from the galvanic battery, certainly need 

1 Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 56. 

2 Mass. Hist. Collect., by Barber, p. 223. 

3 Brattle's Letter, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., pp. 62, 63. 

4 Bostock's Physiology, vol. i., chap, vi., § 2, p. 201. 



58 



NERVOUS PRINCIPLE ACCORDS. 



no comment. Metallic substances may be attracted as 
by a magnet, and adhere to the flesh, and various arti- 
cles may be drawn about as by electric currents. Mys- 
terious " rappings," like electric snappings, may be heard 
as about a surcharged receiver. Wonderful power of 
thought and utterance, like to that shown by every per- 
son under strong nervous excitement, may be displayed. 
Moreover, if it be so that the mind of the clairvoyant is 
perfectly inactive, and that the thought of another per- 
son present is uttered through her lips, certainly the 
cases related by Brattle and others, both as to the com- 
munications of the Indian powahs, and of " the afflicted," 
were but the uttering of the thought of others present, 
by a connected nervous energy. Surely, when the 
afflicted girl read to Cotton Mather Latin, Greek and 
Hebrew, and Indian " not so well," it was the precise 
echo of his own learning coming from her lips. At least, 
Charles, there is a coincidence here worthy of further 
examination and comparison. 






ttittx liit jr. 



"THE MYSTERIOUS DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SPIRITUAL 

AS SEEN AND COMME? 
IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



MEDIUM AS SEEN AND COMMENTED UPON 

5) 



" Perturbationes item sive passiones malae, quae phantasiam sequuntur, 
vehementer nedum proprium, sed alienuum corpus possunt transcendere, 
ac illud immutare adeo ut mirabilis possint produci irnpressiones in demen- 
tis, item rebus extrinsecis ; sicque sanabiles quosdam morbos esse citra 
medicinae adminiculum. Inest certe hominum animis virtus quaedam deli 
tescens immutandi, attrahendi, ligandi, potissimum si maximo imaginationis, 
mentis, voluntatisque excessu, in id quod vel attrahere, vel immutare, vel 
ligare vel impedire cupit." — Scholiast of the Middle Ages. 

[Excitements, also, or diseased affections, which follow a fantasy, can 
strongly overpower not only one's own, but a foreign body, and so change it 
that wonderf ul impressions may be produced in the elements, also in objects 
without us 5 and thus certain diseases may be curable without the adminis- 
tering of medicine. There is certainly in the souls of men a certain myste- 
rious power of attracting, of changing, of binding (especially where there is 
the greatest excess of imagination, of mental energy, of will), over that which 
it desires either to attract, or change, or bind, or impede.] 



No new Suggestion. — Link in the Middle Ages to Ancient Times 
— Thorough Treatise of that Day. — Magic an Exalted Study. - • 
" Soul of the World." — All Spirits Linked. —A Superior Spirit 
can control the Body of a Weaker. — As a Magnet the Spirit 
may attract Material Objects. — Disease Cured. — Power of 
Numbers. — Power of Song. — The Daemon, or Spiritual Princi 
pie communicating Knowledge. — Aristotle's View. — Excited 
like Magnetism Electricity. — Sword of iEneas. — The Daemon 
nothing but Nervous Excitement. — Virgil's Testimony. — In- 
cense and Drugs excite. — Transformations of Circe and Fasci- 
nations in the Middle Ages. — Wonders we are yet to see. 

My Dear Charles : 

Does it seem to you empirical, unfounded and hasty 
theorizing, and a suggestion of personal vanity in your 



60 LINK TO ANCIENT TIMES. 

friend, when thus it is hinted that these apparent spir 
itual influences may be referred to the action of natu 
ral causes, to the operation of our own nervous organ- 
ism ? Judge not your friend too hastily ; for he has 
ardently, if not sincerely, been seeking after truth. If 
he errs in referring these phenomena neither to a good 
nor an evil supernatural influence, but to natural 
causes, he has a large experience of great and good men, 
in many an ancient land and clime, erring with him ; 
for even Cicero and Socrates and Moses may be found 
suggestors of the same hint. 

We have already alluded to the fact that the first 
philosophic examination of the experiments of Mesmer 
led scientific men to trace back the history of similar 
developments far into the middle ages. We have just 
seen that the mysterious developments of witchcraft 
have a history equally hid in the twilight of the dark 
ages. Now, Charles, let me lead you back over the 
fields of history, until we tread the soil of old Greece 
and Rome, and mingle among the cultured men who 
trod the earth some eighteen, and some even twenty-two 
centuries ago. I forewarn you that we shall find the 
philosophic Cicero, Pliny and Plutarch, the physicians 
Luke and Galen, and even old Socrates and Plato, wit- 
nessing phenomena similar to those we now are wonder- 
ing at ; while, moreover, they ascribed them to similar 
causes. 

We will let a profound scholar, of the middle ages * 

1 See an extended aid learned Note on the first and second 
chapters of the Thirtieth Book of Pliny's Natural History, first 



SOUL OF THE WORLD. 61 

introduce us into that alcove of the library of the an- 
cients where are stored their voluminous and deep- 
studied treatises on Spiritual Media ; and his researches 
will reveal to us scenes in ancient days such as we now 
behold, and many that we are probably yet to see in suc- 
cession revived among us. 

The scholiast says 1 "that, although often abused by 
bad men, magic is the science of supernatural influences, 
and has in all ages been regarded the highest of studies. 
Plato and Pythagoras, and the ablest and best Greeks, 
believed in it, and studied and practised it, in common 
with the Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, and, indeed, all 
ancient nations. It is, properly speaking, the active por- 
tion of natural philosophy. Of its proper employ Plato 
said that " the magic of Zoroaster seemed to him nothing 
else than the knowledge and worship of divine beings. 

" The source whence originate the spiritual communi- 
cations received through magic, the ancient philosophers 
found in their idea of ' the soul of the world.' One 
great universal spirit, so the eastern sages long before 
Plato believed, pervades immensity ; whose influence is 
the moving principle in all material things, and from 
whom all human souls and various ranks of superior 
spirits are emanations. Every human soul is part of 
the universal spirit ; and capable, under favorable cir- 
cumstances, of partaking of the knowledge of all other 
spiritual beings. There is in natural existences a kin- 
published at Lyons, A. D. 1531 ; found in the Paris edition of 
1778. 

1 It is a brief abstract, not a translation, which is attempted. 

6 



62 CONTROL OF FOREIGN BODIES. 

dred principle, either of repulsion or attraction, seated 
in their hidden powers. This attracting power the 
Egyptians called natural magic, the Greeks sympathy. 
The spiritual principle in man is not united to the body, 
except by the living principle ; nor the intellect with 
the living principle, except by the spiritual principle. 1 
When nature would form a human body, she draws the 
living principle from the universe. This link reaches 
celestial existences. Thus demons and departed spirits 
can be called up. Thus, too, as the ancients say, there 
is something divine 2 in natural things. So, too, we 
read in Galen, Hippocrates and the Platonists, that 
many human souls excel to such an extent, that they 
can so raise themselves above everything material, as to 
be restored to themselves and to their vigor when the 
body has been laid off; 3 as to agitate, to impel, and 
at will to employ any members of the world, and to 
control as their own any human body in which the 
spiritual principle is subjected. 4 Behold here, Charles, 
in the germ, at least, an illustration of the controlling 
and moving of material objects, and of the employing 

1 "When contrasted, intellectus and animus seem to represent the 
intellect, the soul, that is, pure spirit ; anima, the spiritual princi- 
ple, the nervous principle, the spiritual medium ; and spiritus, the 
living principle. When not in contrast, spiritus mundi and anima 
mundi seem to be synonymous. In the former case, the words are 
rendered as indicated ; in the latter, the expression is rendered 
simply spirit or soul of the world, 

2 The history of a philosophy now popular may be traced here. 

3 See the case cited in Letter Mnth, p. 96. 

4 Histoire de PLne. Paris edit., 1778. Tom. X., pp. 139—142. 



DISEASES CURED. 63 

of the body of another, seen in our day. Let us i dIIow 
up the theory. 

" There are four fluids which the spiritual principle 
employs at will. As the magnet has a wondrous and 
peculiar power of attracting iron, so, through the soul 
of the world, man has a wondrous power. The soul of 
one existence goes out and enters into another, and 
excites, impels, or impedes its operations ; as the dia- 
mond impedes the magnetic stone in attracting iron. 
The medium of existing things is the spirit of the world. 
Through this spirit every hidden property of things in- 
animate, as metals and stones, and of things animate, as 
plants, is propagated ; and this reaches up through man 
to celestial existences. This is the chain of Homer ; 
these are the circles of Plato. To excite this influence 
the perturbations or passions of the mind greatly con- 
duce. These perturbations or passions can pass over to 
a foreign body, and change it so that wonderful impres- 
sions can be produced on the elements, even on external 
objects ; and thus diseases can be cured without the aid 
of medicine. There surely is in the souls of men a cer- 
tain power of changing, of attracting, of binding (espec- 
ially where there is the greatest outgoing of imagination, 
of mind and of will), whatever it desires to attract, to 
change, or to bind. For thus, as the Magi hold, 
through affections of the soul, as well as through direct 
aid of certain celestial influences, fortunately in apposi- 
tion, wonders can be performed. The Arabian philoso- 
phers gave rules for training the soul to this power." 1 

1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 142—150, Note. 



64 POWER OP NUMBERS. 

How plainly, Charles, the learned ancient accounts 
for the healing of the sick, the power of the magnetizer 
over another, and the moving of tables, &c, seen in our 
day, on the principle of nervous excitement. 

" The Magi assert, too, that numbers enter in a cer- 
tain manner into the composition of substances ; and, 
having a certain connection in the divine mind, a won- 
derful property is originated. Thus, the Pythagoreans 
employed the number three in purifications, to which 
Yirgil several times symbolically refers. The Magians, 
by this effect of a number, do, indeed, bind, remove, 
and cure diseases." 1 This form of the mysterious 
development of the spiritual medium, Charles, is not 
yet introduced into our circles ; but it lives still in the 
East, 2 and will cross the water, doubtless, in due 
time. 

" By the power of song, too, enchantresses, like Circe, 
excited and controlled men through this influence. Of 
this Lucan, Virgil and Tibullus, speak." 3 Another art 
of the East, which has begun to be employed in con- 
nection with the development of our day. 

" We come now to another class of magic, that exer- 
cised through inspiration from spiritual beings. There 
are three grades of nature ; gods and men being the ex- 
tremes, and the middle grade being called demons^ from 
their superior knowledge. In his book on * Sleep and 

1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 151 — 153, Note. 

2 See Let. Ninth., p. 105. Shakspeare mentions this magic charm 
of the number three, Macbeth, Act. I., Scene 3. 

3 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 157, 158. 



aristotle's view. 65 

Vigils,' Aristotle says, ' The blood descending in great 
abundance to the sensitive principle, at the same time 
there descend forms conceived in the imagination ; by 
which means demons can move the fluids, both of the 
interior and exterior senses, and thus present to the 
organs certain forms, just as they would outwardly 
meet us, not only in sleep, but when awake.' Thus 
demons do really affect us and communicate knowledge." l 
Here, again, is a further attempt, Charles, on the part 
of the ancients, even to explain the physiological law 
by which the " sensitive principle " is thus affected, so 
that impressions like real sensations are produced on 
the bodily senses, and thus real knowledge of distant 
and of future events communicated to the mind. 

And now we come to the concluding part of the 
scholiast's treatise, and meet a thought yet more in 
point. The spiritual medium, the spirit of the world, 
which is the medium of existences, appears to be noth- 
ing else than the electrical and nervous fluids, of which 
physiologists now speak ; being excited by the same 
means, and manifesting the same phenomena when 
excited. Remember, the soul of the world spoken of 
by the ancients was nothing more nor less than what we 
call " the laws of nature ; " and which we regard not 
spirit, but, like electricity, intermediate between mat- 
ter and spirit ; 2 and remembering this, observe how 

1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 168—170. 

2 It is just this neglect to distinguish between pure spirit and 
the intermediate principles which characterizes Mr. Emerson's ex- 
pression, " I look for the new teacher * * that shall see the 

6* 



66 THE DEMON THE NERVOUS ENERGY. 

the excitement here spoken, the source of it, and its 
passing over from one person to another, is just that we 
have before hinted. " The demon " (or spiritual princi- 
ple), says the scholiast, " dreads iron." On this account, 
those who would drive away the demon (or spiritual 
principle) hold before them swords, iron, javelins ; which 
also the Mantuan Homer (Virgil) seems to notice in 
the sixth iEneid : — 

" Procul, procul este profani 
Conclamat Vates, totoque absistite luco. 
Tuque invade viam, vaginaque eripe/erram." 

On this account, iEneas also had a consecrated sword. 1 
One can hardly avoid, Charles, comparing this with 
Mesmer's use of the iron-rod, and the bits of metal now 
employed by magnetizers. 

And now remark a statement even more important, 
showing that the Platonists meant by demons nothing else 
than the spiritual or nervous principle. " Saint Thomas 
(Aquinas) writes, that ' fear, grief and joy, cannot exist 
in demons, as they are perturbations ; since they are 
these sensitive appetites ; and an appetite properly is a 
property in an organ of the body. Virgil seems to 
allude to this same view when he says : — 

6 Diine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, 
Euriale 1 an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido.' 

A good desire of the soul, then, is called God, by 

identity of gravitation with purity of heart." Address at Cam- 
bridge, July 15, 1838. 

1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., p. 172. 



DRUGS AND SONG. 67 

him. Jamblicus writes, that a demon proper is nothing 
else than the intellect." l The further we pursue this 
subject, Charles, the more shall we feel that there were 
men of strong common sense, in ancient times, as well 
as now ; and that, if we can but work under the shell 
and get at the kernel of their thought, we shall find 
that human minds and human opinions are as truly the 
same as nuts are, in all lands and in all ages. 

" The cultivators of magic," he proceeds, " employed 
the burning of incense in calling forth the spiritual 
influence ; " a method not yet introduced into our coun- 
try ; though now, 2 and from the most ancient times, em- 
ployed in the East. " The smoke had two virtues ; in 
it, especially if made from burning the heart, head or 
wind-pipe, of a chameleon, they thought they had a 
power of inducing an electrical influence (tonitrua) ; 
and in it they made the images of the spirits to appear. 
The influence of stimulating drugs and of song also 
was employed, as Virgil, Tibullus and Cato describe; by 
which an influence so great, over the imagination, and 
really over the souls of men, was exerted by Circe and 
other sorceresses, that they not only seemed to them- 
selves to be, but actually were, turned into swine, or 
anything else the enchantress pleased." 3 Surely, Charles, 
this belief in enchantment could not have had such a 
hold on intelligent men, as in many an age, and espec- 
ially in the middle ages, it gained, unless there does 

i Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 172—173. 

2 See Let. Ninth, p. 105. 

3 Histoire de Pliae, Tom. X., pp. 173—175. 



68 NOVELTIES FOR LECTURERS. 

exist some mysterious power, which, under nervous ex- 
citement, one person can exert on another. 

The concluding portion of the scholiast's note describes 
the various methods by which this spiritual communica- 
tion is gained. The experimenters of our day may 
wonder at the list, on which they have as yet only 
entered. " There is Hippomantia, divining by the poi- 
sonous excrescence of the colt, of which Virgil speaks. 
There is the use of the sword of the executioner im- 
mersed in wine ; there is Axiomantia, the employ of 
axes ; and there is Lecanomantia, which the Assyrians 
employed, filling a skin with water, and placing in it 
silver, amber, and certain precious stones ; " all of which 
seem to indicate that the excitement of the spiritual 
influence by the ancient Magi was through an agency 
similar to what was afterwards called the discovery of 
Galvani. Then " there was Aeromantia, and Botano- 
mantia, and Cleromantia, and Gastromantia, 1 and Geo- 
mantia, and Pyromantia, and Capnomantia, and Necro- 
mantia, and Scyomantia, and Literomantia, and Um- 
bilicomantia, and Chiromantia;" 2 a list most discourag- 
ing to him who thinks of investigating this whole sub- 
ject, most interesting to him who can see the germ of 
these old systems yet living in the different parts of the 

1 This form of magic deserves special note, as it is one often 
alluded to among the Komans, Greeks, Hebrews, and the Orientals 
generally. The scholiast's description of it is, " One class is per- 
formed with a large-bellied jar, into which it was the practice for a 
boy to gaze." The descriptions of the other classes we omit. 

2 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 175—177. 



THE UNIVERSAL HAS A LAW. 69 

world, most exhilarating to itinerant lecturers who anx- 
iously are looking for something to supply the last 
novelty, and most instructive to him who can assure him- 
self that through them all runs one great principle, and 
in them all is seen the same intermediate agent working, 
the " nervous principle," which is the spiritual medium. 
The learned scholiast who has given so grand and 
wide an introduction to the ancient theory of the spirit- 
ual medium now takes his leave of us, with this con- 
cluding remark, " Thus much concerning the kinds of 
magic. These are facts which we have culled from cer- 
tain authors and monuments, and their teachings, them- 
selves most ancient, and by name and title unknown." 
The remark will prepare us for our next conference. 



tttitt #0£tttll- 

THE MORBID ACTION OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, AS 

OBSERVED AND THEORIZED UPON BY THE 

PRACTICAL ROMANS. 



" Proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, irritam, inanem esse, haben- 
tem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras." — Pliny on Magic. 

[Thus, therefore, he was persuaded that it is dishonest, useless and 
frivolous, but has nevertheless some shades of truth.] 

" No superstition can ever be prevalent, and widely diffused through 
ages and nations, without having a foundation in human nature." — 
Schlegel on the Witches of Shakspeare. 



Ancient Authors " referred to. — Roman View practical. - • 
Modes of seeking Knowledge. — Three Views of Source. — 
Juvenal's Satire, and Horace's Wit. — Virgil's Allegory, and 
Interpretation of it. — Plutarch. — His Matter of Fact. — Why 
Poetic Oracles ceased. — Why Delphi is silent. — The Nervous 
Exciter failed. — Reason and Religion agreed. — Pliny the 
Naturalist. — "Magical Vanities." — Hold three-fold, meeting 
Bodily, Intellectual, and Moral Want. — Some Shades of Truth. 
— Homer's Spirit called up. — The Naturalist's Conclusion. — 
Galen, the Physician. — Medical View of Indian, Greek, and 
Roman Physicians . — Power of Amulets. — Electric Illustra- 
tions. — The Physician's Conclusion. 

My Dear Charles : 

The scholiast of the middle ages, over whose pages 
we have just been poring, mentioned in his conclusion 
that he had gleaned his facts and reasonings from the 
" teachings " of "ancient authors." Among the old Ro- 
mans, and older Greeks, types of two classes of minds, 



ROMAN VIEW PRACTICAL. 71 

we naturally look for his authorities. We may find 
them agreeing in their facts, and, perhaps, only appar- 
ently differing in their conclusions drawn from those 
facts. 

Although among every nation of men all classes of 
mind are met, yet in his natural bent the pure Roman 
was a practical man. The Romans, at no period, had 
a national oracle; 1 although caves whence issued me- 
phitic gases, like those which excited the raving Pytho- 
ness at Delphi, abounded in volcanic Italy. More- 
over, although a few minds of a certain cast were 
drawn to visit the old Grecian shrines, yet, in the ad- 
vance of Roman intelligence, the Pythoness there ceased, 
firs4 to chant in poesy, and then to give even in prose 
her responses. 2 In the Roman writers, therefore, a 
practical view of the manifestation of the spiritual 
medium may be expected. While in various modes, 
through the spiritual medium, men sought knowledge 
otherwise unattainable, the common mind regarded 
the witnessed mysteries as supernatural ; the artful 
practiser on popular belief, half-deceived and half-de- 
ceiving, knew part to be deceptive, and part real and 
mysterious ; and the philosophic mind of the poet, the 
orator, the physician, and the scholar, is seen ever con- 
demning the artifice, yet respecting the facts, and 
seeking a law for them. 

The two prominent modes of seeking such knowledge 
were through dreams, and through persons under nerv- 

1 Eschenberg's Manual of Classical Literature, Part iv. 3 § 226. 

2 Juvenal and Plutarch ; see pp. 74 76. 



72 MODES OF SEEKING KNOWLEDGE OE THE FUTURE. 

ous excitement, or inspiration. By the philosophic, 
however, trust in such communications was regarded a 
thing of the past, a reliance of their revered Trojan and 
Latian ancestors ; ! and for all the knowledge thus really 
communicated they found a philosophic explanation. 2 
They especially marked that the supposed inspired 
persons were females of nervous temperament ; as the 
Pythoness of Delphi, the Sibyl who brought the famed 
books to Tarquin, and the Cumsean Sibyls. The vari- 
ous other methods by which superhuman knowledge 
was sought among the Romans have been thus clas- 
sified. 3 First, Sacrifices. In solemn pomp the bullock 
was brought to the altar and slain, and his entrails and 
liver were laid bare, when the solemn aruspice inspected 
their appearance, and from it divined the future. 
Second, Birds and other animals. The auspice watched 
how the raven, crow, owl and cock, sounded their 
shrill notes, how the eagle and vulture flew, how the 
sacred chickens picked up their food, and how vari- 
ous quadrupeds crossed his path ; and thence augured. 
Third, Electrical phenomena. Early in the morn, or 
when a storm-cloud gathered, the augurs gazed and 
listened ; and, if lightning flashed or thunder rolled on 
the left, good was promised. Fourth, The heavenly 
bodies. At dead of night, or at early twilight, the 
inquirer went to the astrologer's tower, usually a Chal- 

1 See Virgil, p. 75. 

2 See Cicero, Let. Eighth, p. 87. 

3 See the invaluable " Roman Antiquities " of Alex. Adam, 
L.L.D., New York, 1830, pp. 252, 274; with his scholar-like refer- 
ences. Also, " Eschenberg," part iv., § 75. 



THREE VIEWS. 73 

dean from old Babylon. Taking his book of recorded 
conjunctions, of risings and settings of the stars and 
planets, by the aspect of the heavens the Magian di- 
vined good or ill. Especially from calculating what 
star was rising at the moment of one's birth, he fore- 
told the fortunate or adverse destiny of the consulter. 
Fifth, Lots, Thrown like dice, and their fall observed, 
or, placed in a vase, sometimes filled with water, and 
drawn out thence by a boy, or by the consulter at the 
oracle, the priest interpreted the meaning of their pe- 
culiar appearance. Sixth, Magic art. Among these, 
what the Greeks called gastromantia, and the Latins 
ventriloquism, or speaking from the abdomen, is prom- 
inent. The student of Roman literature gathers this 
picture of it. A boy sits watching the appearance of 
water in the belly (or bulging portion, yauT^rj) of a 
tall glass vase, while the artful ventriloquist, near by, 
utters guttural and mysterious responses. Seventh, 
Omens. At important crises, the slightest accident or 
incident was interpreted favorably, or otherwise ; as 
sneezing, stumbling, spilling salt at table, &c. In ref- 
erence to all these, it is worthy here to note the three 
classes of views in every age entertained. The impuls- 
ive and ignorant, as well as the cultivated man of nervous 
temperament, saw in them supernatural manifestations ; 
a rough, fear-naught soldier, like Plautus, could in 
scorn throw the sacred chickens overboard, if they did 
not eat to suit him ; while a man of even balance, of 
thorough wisdom and address, like Caesar, when he 
stumbled and fell on his face in stepping on the shore 
7 



74 



of Africa, could turn the bad omen into a good one, by 
grasping the sand, and kissing it, as he fell, saying, 
" Teneo te, Africa" — I seize thee, Africa. 1 

Among the able writers of Rome this same difference 
of view is seen. Juvenal, who flourished A. D. 190, 
satirizes all trust in such communications. He pictures 
the man of weak mind and conscience trembling for 
his imagined faults, going to seek pardon, imagining that 
he sees the silver serpent of the diviner move his head, 
and that the gods speak to his spirit at night. Dis- 
trustful of his own supposed revelations, he seeks the 
crafty fortune-teller of Judea, the pretended interpreter 
of the laws of Solyma, and for a paltry copper the 
Jew sells any dreams he wishes. He hies, then, to the 
Armenian augur ; and, as a last resort, seeks the Chal- 
dean astrologer, the oracle of Delphi having now ceased 
to respond. The shrewd poet thus presents the two 
sources of mysterious communications, through one's 
own agitated dreams, and through the excited and myste- 
rious working of another's fancy ; and he seems to hint 
that, through the nervous principle (anima), the myste- 
rious knowledge comes to the mind (mens), both when 
in dreams the excited sleeper seizes sometimes the truth, 
and when the practised fortune-teller by his understood 
art gains a knowledge of his consulter's secret thought. 2 
In the same strain oft writes the pleasure-loving Horace; 
rallying his friend, Leuconoe, for trying Babylonian 
numbers, and being too credulous ; and declaring that 

1 Adam's Roman Antiquities, pp. 254, 256; with his copious 
references. 

2 Juvenal, Satire vi., 410—450. 



virgil's allegory. 75 

intelligent and brave men must be diseased in mind, and 
fanatical, when they give way to superstitious belief 
in spiritual manifestations. 1 On the other hand, the 
sickly, melancholy Virgil, the very type of the reflect- 
ive man, gives the opposite picture ; dating the view he 
expresses, however, in a distant age, and throwing in 
many a reference to philosophic solutions of his own 
time. The Trojan iEneas goes in confident devotion to 
the cave of the Cumsean Sibyl. Wondrous is the 
•knowledge of his family she displays ; as wondrous as 
that coming from a similar medium in our day ; but 
she speaks in a nervous frenzy, in which her own mind 
is lost. With a golden bough and a consecrated sword, 
with metallic exciters of the nervous influence, his way 
to gain spiritual communications is prepared. From 
spirits called up by a triple invocation, not from the Sibyl 
herself, he is to learn. From the shade of his father, 
Anchises, he receives communications ; and his responses 
first present the theory by which spirits are supposed to 
communicate with the living, through the nervous prin- 
ciple (spiritus), and the intelligent principle (mens), 
which pervade the universe. And finally the secret 
is revealed, that not at all an actual descent of JEneas 
to the spirit-world has the philosophic poet recorded ; 
any more than Bunyan, in his Pilgrim, writes anything 
but allegory. It is in magnetic trance, in sleeping vis- 
ion, iEneas and the Sibyl have gained their communica- 
tions ; for from the ivory gate of " sleep " Anchises at last 
releases them. In another picture, free from allegory, 

1 Horace's Odes, B. i., No. 11; Satire in., verses 80, 278. 



76 plutarch's matter of fact. 

Virgil expressly calls the maiden having the prophetic 
furor one " deranged in intellect ;" he describes as per- 
fectly as our Salem ancestors saw it the wild-fire spread 
of the uncontrollable excitement among her companions 
of like temperament, and paints to life the magic art. 1 
There is philosophy worthy of modern study here. 

We have seen thus in Rome's poets the two extreme 
views of spiritual manifestations. In her practical 
writers we shall meet the middle view ; which admits the 
facts, and refers them to a natural and sufficient cause, 
that of the nervous principle, or spiritual medium. The 
story-telling Plutarch, who wrote in the later Roman 
age, and in the Greek language, was so interested in 
these subjects as to pen two books ; the one on the 
question, " Why Pythia does not now give Oracles in 
Metre ; " and the other, " Concerning the Cessation of 
Oracular Responses." Discussing the first question, he 
presents the theory that " the body of the dead passes 
into plants, and thence into animals ; and so in the 
entrails of the animal the spirit of the dead may appear. 
God uses the prophetic maiden as the sun does the 
moon, to reflect from her his thought. The enthusiasm 
called the divine instinct, seen in her, is from two 
sources, from a bodily affection, and from the mind's 
nature. She speaks in poetry on the same principle 
that astrologers and philosophers, and even men full of 
wine, and minds under any strong excitement, break 
out in song. No grave questions now are presented ; 

i Virgil's JEneid, Book vi. ; vers. 46— 50 5 100—102, 137, 260, 
506, 893—8; and vn., 376—396. Also Eclog. vm. 



WHY DELPHI IS SILENT. 77 

do excitement of war, sedition, of tyranny, and fearful 
calamity, calls forth the frenzy. The trifling inquir- 
ies of servants and young women, to itinerant fortune- 
tellers, about marriage, their health, &c, are unworthy 
an answer in verse. Finally, as it is puerile to admire 
the rainbow, and rings about the sun and moon, and 
comets, more than the sun and moon, so the fondnes? 
for enigmas and allegories in obscure poetry is not 
becoming those who employ reason to gain a knowledge 
of God." l On the second theme, Plutarch gives a brief 
history of oracles, from Egypt and its priests to Britain 
and its Druids. " In Greece the oracle had ceased, 
chiefly on account of the insignificant inquiries made at 
the shrine. Divination, however, remained. Through 
the demons or genii (of which Homer spoke in general 
terms, but the later Greeks more philosophically ^ , knowl- 
edge from the spirit world is gained. There is a uni- 
versal medium ; for, since there are very many worlds, and 
to each one its own medium, and at the same time its 
own peculiar motion, in some to the medium, in some 
from it, and in some around it, all gravitating (^grj 9 
gravia) substances must on all sides be drawn together 
towards one medium. 2 The knowledge gained by this 
medium some regarded as supernatural. It is in reality 
natural ; a faculty of our minds. Memory in us is as 
the hearing of deaf persons, and the seeing of the blind ; 

1 Plutarchi Opera, Lipsiae, 1777; vol. vn., pp. 566, 592—594, 
604, 607, 608, and 611. 

2 The germ, it would almost seem, of Newton's law of gravita- 
tion. 

7# 



78 REASON AND RELIGION AGREED. 

therefore it is not wonderful if, apprehending, as it does, 
many things which have ceased to be, it also gains 
knowledge of many which do not yet exist. Since, 
therefore, souls have this power of mind innate, yet 
hidden, some suddenly manifest it in dreams or at sac- 
rifices, and employ it. Probably it is as when wine, its 
vapors being borne to the brain, produces great move- 
ment in the mind ; for the chief power of divining is 
in the raving and furor. Moreover, it is not equable, 
but subject to changes. It is extinguished in great 
rains, is dissipated in places where lightning is prevalent, 
and especially subsides in an earthquake. A certain 
tempering of the air and the w ind affects it. It vehe- 
mently excites the frame." " I wish not to call into 
doubt anything which is regarded divine. I will free 
myself from the charge, Plato being called out as my 
witness and defender. For he blamed Anaxagoras the 
ancient, because, too much immersed in natural causes, 
and always seeking after and tracing out the necessity of 
those affections which occur in natural bodies, he omit- 
ted the final and efficient cause, the more exalted in the 
order of causes, and the more potent principles. In the 
mean time, Plato himself was the first or most promi- 
nent of all philosophers in uniting these two ; so that, 
indeed, he ascribed to God the origin of those things 
which are performed through a general principle. We 
do not make divination to occur without God, or without 
a general principle, when we regard the human soul 
(animum) as its subject, and the spirit (spiritum) or 



" MAGICAL VANITIES." 79 

vapors of enthusiasm as its instrument." l Read thought- 
fully, Charles, these statements ; and bear witness that 
our supposition was no novelty ; it was not baseless in 
reason, nor repugnant to religion. 

Another work of this same age will naturally attract 
our notice. Here are ranged twelve large quarto vol- 
umes, the works of Pliny, the naturalist, 2 who closed 
his long life's investigations, when, in pressing on to 
behold nearer the belching flames of Vesuvius, the 
smoke suffocated him, and, wrapping his mantle about 
his head, he fell amid the ashes that were burying 
Pompeii. Draw we out the tenth volume, and turn we 
to his thirtieth book. We have already read the long 
Latin commentary here introduced at the bottom of the 
pages; and now we will glance at Pliny's own text. 
" Magical vanities," — these are the first words that 
strike our eyes. Surely here is a cool practical man, 
of the observing cast, not likely to be carried away by 
deceptive appearances, but leaning rather to the oppo- 
site extreme, to which a mind given to observation of 
material facts is sure to tend. We will hear him, and 
then we shall have the other side. " By fraudulent arts 
often the science of the Magi has gained wide hold on the 
belief of all ages and nations. 3 Its relation to medicine 
gave it its first grasp on human belief; and its connection 
with religion on the one hand, and mathematical science 

1 Plutarchi Opera, vol. vn., pp. 613, 621, 627, 631—633, 639, 
658, 659, 665, 698, 699, 702, 708, 712, 715, 718. 

2 See the Paris edition of 1778, already referred to. 

3 Pp. 138, 140. 



80 SOME SHADES OF TRUTH. 

on the other, has confirmed its controlling power over 
the intellect and the heart." * Taking possession thus 
of the senses of man by its triple appeal to the bodily, 
intellectual and moral wants of men, Pliny traces its 
history from Zoroaster to his day. Everywhere the 
medicinal virtue attributed to it seems to be its intro- 
duction ; reminding us of the chief promise of kindred 
developments in our day. At the head of the Jewish 
Magi he mentions Moses; 2 no unimportant testimonial, 
coming from one of Pliny's age, nation and personal 
character. The Druids of old Gaul and Britain he 
refers to "this class of prophets and medical men." 3 
Of the methods by which knowledge of spiritual things 
is gained, he mentions, that it is sought " by water, and 
spheres, and air, and stars, and lamps, and basins, and 
axes, and by conversations with disembodied spirits, and 
with inferior deities." 4 He gives an account, then, of 
the famed magician, Tiridates, from whom Nero in 
vain sought to draw his art ; and states his conclusion, 
that though the art is in general injurious and useless, 
" yet it has some shades of truth." 5 

He closes by mentioning that the *' celebrated gram- 
marian, Apion, whom he had seen when a young man, 
had published that there was an herb named cynoceph- 
alia (in Egypt called osyrites), which enabled a man 
to divine, and secured him against all poisons ; and 
Apion declared that he himself had called up departed 
spirits, in order to inquire of Homer of what country 

1 Pp. 142—148. 2 p. 164. 3 p. 166. 

4 Pp. 168, 170. 5 P. 178. 



GALEN, THE PHYSICIAN. 81 

and w'lat ancestors he was born ; while, nevertheless, 
he did not dare to publish what he had replied." 1 
Surely Pliny gives us enough to show that the scenes 
of our day were familiar to Apion and himself, and 
that the same views as to their supernatural or natural 
origin then prevailed among thinking men. He decides 
that the influence certainly was connected with physical 
causes, arising from an excitement of the nervous organ- 
ism by means of an intoxicating plant, or some other 
stimulant acting on the nervous system. 

Are you weary of these old Latin authors ? Be 
patient till we can look at one more, a Roman medical 
writer of the second century. Here, staring on the 
back of four tall folios, is the gilded title, " Galeni 
Opera," the works of Galen. Out we lift the cumbrous 
one marked Tom. III., and, turning to page 1497, read 
the article headed, "de Incantatione, Adjuratione et 
Suspensione," concerning incantation, adjuration and 
suspension (or the wearing of amulets). In a familiar 
letter, like ours, that early and most able, as well as 
voluminous medical writer, commences thus : " You 
have asked, my dearest son, concerning incantation, 
adjuration and suspension, if they can do any good ; 
and if I have found them in the books of the Greeks, as 
they are found in the books of India." From his pro- 
longed reply we copy these sentences. " Plato says, 
1 When the human mind loves anything, although it is 
not beneficial, it assures itself that the thing does it 
good ; and, simply from the bias of mind, that thing 

i P. 180. 



82 THE amulet's power. 

does t>enefit the body. For example, if any one is con- 
fident that incantation will do him good, whatever may 
be his character, him, indeed, it does benefit. 5 " 

Galen adds to this statement of Plato, " I have seen 
this, indeed, that there are causes of daily-recurring 
disorders of the health, especially of those disorders 
which spring from nervous affections. In healthy per- 
sons, indeed, the causes of infirmity have been these 
same ones. Whence Socrates says, 'Incantations are 
words leading astray rational minds, according to the 
inception of hope or the incitement of fear.' The Indi- 
an medical men only believe that the incantation and 
adjuration is an aid ; while the ancient Grecian physi- 
cians thought by these to recall into the wandering soul 
its own perfection ; which, being recovered, it was neces- 
sary that the body be recovered by it." Galen himself 
seems to adopt this explanation ; " as the fluids of the 
body, being changed, change the action of the mind, so 
the action of the mind, being changed, changes the 
fluids." He speaks then of the reputed efficacy of 
amulets ; saying of it, " which I do not deny can be 
done, on account of the conformation of the mind of 
which I have spoken." After a long enumeration of 
medicinal specifics of this kind, he thus concludes. 
"These things I have culled from the books of the 
ancients. # =fc I have not tried them ; but yet they 
are not to be denied by me ; because, if we had not seen 
the magnet attracting iron to itself, we should not be 
assured of it, we should not believe it. So also that 
lead breaks adamant, which iron does not do ; that a 



physician's conclusion. 83 

stone which is called nitrum is burned in the fire ; and 
that a certain fish takes away the feeling of one seizing 
it. All which things, unless they are seen by us, are 
not believed ; but, being tried, they are certain. And 
perhaps the sayings of the ancients have the same mean- 
ing. ^ * Sometimes certain substances have a prop- 
erty incomprehensible in its character, on account of its 
own subtilty ; not appreciable to the senses, on account 
of its own inscrutableness." Thus this last and one of 
the greatest of the Roman philosophers decides that the 
mysteries of the spiritual medium are not to be denied ; 
but that they have a general and natural, though incom- 
prehensible, cause ; and that the books of both the 
Greeks and Hindoos, from whom he gathered his facts, 
explained these phenomena virtually on the same prin- 
ciple. Moreover, in illustration of the natural agency, 
or property, by which spiritual communications are thus 
made, he adduces the very examples to which physiolo- 
gists now refer; the mysterious properties of the magnet, 
and the electric power of the torpedo. 



ttiitt tftgjijf. 



THE FASCINATING MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRITUAL 

MEDIUM, AS SEEN AND STUDIED BY THE 

IMAGINATIVE GREEKS. 



— "&VWV re yaQ (pavsQog l\v nollaxig /nev oixoi, rroXXaxig Se 
Ini Twv xoivcov rijg TioXstog ^w/itoiv 9 xai /uavTivrj xQw/uBvog otjx 
acpavijg qv* Sisrt-dQ7'XXt]To yuQ, 'tag (palrj ^oxQarrjg, to dai^oviov 
savrco otjuaivsiv." — Xenophon's Memorabilia. 

[For that he offered sacrifices was manifest, often at home, and often on 
the common altars of the city, and that he employed divination was not 
unapparent ; for it was commonly reported that Socrates said the demon 
made communications to him.] 



Who are "the Ancients." — The Greek Reflective. — Cicero a 
Roman-Greek. — Divination believed in by all the Greek 
Schools. — Facts and Reasonings as in our day. — Source, three- 
fold: Illusion, Corporeal Causes, the Spiritual Medium. — Homer, 
his Spirits, Nervous Visions. — Hesiod, his Chain. — Pythagoras, 
"Music of the Spheres." — Plato, Intermediate Principle. — 
Conclusion as in Later Ages. 

My Dear Charles: 

When did " the ancients " live ? Really, to reach 
them seems like reaching " the West," which ever re- 
treats as we advance. The scholiast of the middle 
ages spoke of the ancients as his authorities ; and when 
we had gone back to the old Roman writers, we might 
have thought we had reached our limit. Rut now 
Plutarch and Pliny and Galen are found still pointing 



DIVINATION UNIVERSALLY REVERENCED. 85 

us back. " Alps on Alps arise ; " and if we would gain 
the topmost peak for a look-out, many a distant summit 
is yet to be climbed. Courage, Charles, and we shall 
breathe a higher air yet. 

As the Roman was practical, so the Greek was re- 
flective. Dreams of the imagination filled his mind, 
and in art he embodied them. To him the excitement 
of the nervous principle gave a pleasing thrill, and its 
undue manifestations were to him most fascinating. 
This was the Greek characteristic ; though all classes 
of minds met and clashed with each other in Athens. 

Cicero was a true Greek, though not born on Grecian 
soil. He defended the use of the Greek language by 
his countrymen, he loved Grecian studies, and drank 
deeply into the spirit of Greece. So thoroughly Gre- 
cian is his discussion of the subject we are tracing, that 
we must read him among the Greeks as their inter- 
preter. 

Shall we steal up and look over the shoulder of the 
masterly Cicero, as in the maturity of his years he pens 
down, in two lengthy books on " divination, 1 ' the 
thoughts of his ripening age on the spiritual medium ? 
With the fervor of a sincere heart, he eloquently argues 
the certainty that there is a medium by which we gain 
knowledge of the spirit world, and of events which only 
by spiritual intuition can be known; showing that 
among all nations, and by the ablest philosophers of all 
nations, divination has been believed and practised; 
among the Greeks, for example, Pythagoras and Soc- 
rates, the Academy, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics, 
8 



86 KNOWLEDGE DERIVED FROM IT. 

all but the Epicurean, cherishing faith in it ; the ideal- 
ist and materialist extremes, and the mediating ration- 
alist, all agreeing that mysterious knowledge is derived 
from the spiritual medium, while the sceptic alone 
doubted. 1 

As to the mode of its manifestation and its concomi- 
tants, he gives scattered hints. It shows itself when 
the mind of the diviner is dormant, either in sleep or 
in prophetic furor; and an intelligence from without 
utters its thought through the passive organs of the 
speaker ; reminding us of the quiescence of the clair- 
voyant, and of the medium of our times. 2 It manifests 
itself, as Aristotle remarks, in unhealthy persons, espec- 
ially those subject to melancholy ; 3 it has the aspect of 
ordinary, strong mental excitement ; 4 and Pythagoras 
thought that some kinds of diet, as beans, were unfavor- 
able to its development ; 5 all of which points to the 
nervous principle as the source. The Stoic hints that 
wonders of healing, and strange powers of reading and 
writing, accompanied the influence ; 6 which seem the 
counterpart of the mysteries of our day. 

Of its nature scattered hints from many a source are 
presented ; through which, however, a chain of union 
seems to run. The Stoics thought there was much of it 
deception, and that all could be explained on natural 
principles. Cato said that lie wondered that the sooth- 

1 Cicero de Divin., Lib. I., § 1, 39, &c. 2 Ibid, I., 50. 

3 Ibid, i., 38. * Ibid, i., 50. 

5 Ibid, ii., 58. 6 Ibid, n., 59. 



SOURCE IMAGINARY, CORPOREAL, OR SPIRITUAL. 87 

sayer did not laugh when he saw his fellow-soothsayer. 1 
He queried why it was that an insane man should know 
more of futurity than a sane one ; and that the crazy 
girl, Cassandra, should be inspired, when the venerable 
and wise king, Priam, was not ; 2 questions about the 
character of the medium, similar to those now heard. 
The Stoic compared the right responses of the diviner 
to the mysterious mental acumen sometimes shown by 
intoxicated persons ; 3 and Democritus compared the 
eloquent language of the Pythoness to that of the poet 
under high artistic excitement ; 4 a suggestion similar to 
an illustration already adduced for our times. Cicero 
says that an eminent Druid, an acquaintance of his, pro- 
fessed that a natural principle, which the Greeks called 
physiology, was known to himself; and that partly by 
auguries, partly by conjecture, he foretold the future. 5 
Cicero himself, in an elaborate argument, refers the 
source to the sympathy by which human souls are linked 
to the soul of the world, through which, the spirit set 
free from the body (as some easily are), either when we 
are asleep or awake, really gains the knowledge of other 
spirits, and of the universal soul. 6 In what way this 
influence from without so mysterious is communicated 
cannot be explained, any more than can the myste- 
ries of nature's simplest operations, as the growth of 
plants, and the healing action of medicines ; 7 and forci- 

1 Cicero de Divin., Lib. n., 24. 2 ibid, i., 39; n., 54. 

3 Ibid, ii., 59. 4 Ibid, i., 37. 

5 Ibid, i., 41. 6 ibid, i., 49, 51, 52, and I., 60. 

7 Ibid, i., 7, 9, 51. 



88 DREAMS FULFILLED. 

bly ho remarks, " Ignorance of causes in a new thing 
produces wonder ; but if there is the same ignorance in 
things familiar, we do not wonder." * 

Of dreams Cicero speaks at length ; and with their 
frequent remarkable agreement with fact, he, as well as 
many others, in both ancient and modern times, was 
specially impressed. Of these striking cases there seem 
to be two classes : dreams of future events, which after- 
wards become real; and dreams of events passing at 
the instant in some distant place, which are found to 
agree with facts which were at the moment occurring. 
As to the first class there may be various explanations. 
As dreams are but a continuance of our waking 
thoughts, it may be that in one case of thousands, our 
imagination, or dreaming conjecture, may be correct, 
accordant with fact ; and this accidental agreement 
seems striking only because the thousand wrong conjec- 
tures are overlooked, and the single right conjecture is 
remembered. It may be, further, that a dream — for 
instance, of success or failure in any enterprise — may 
so affect the mind and through it the bodily powers, that 
this itself will insure the fulfilment of the dream. As 
to the second class, the same may be true : the one right 
conjecture may be reported, while a thousand wrong 
ones may be unreported; or the kindred impression 
resting on two minds at a distance from each other, — 
for instance, the conviction of both the sick man and of 
his absent friend that he will not survive long, — this 

1 Cicero de Divin., Lib. n., 22. 






cicero's explanation. 89 

impression may induce the dream of the latter and the 
death of the former ; and that at points of time so near 
that the dream will seem to be a revelation of the death. 
There are cases, however, where apparently the knowl- 
edge or thought of a person at a distance seems reported 
to the mind of the dreamer ; as also apparently (though 
probably not really) the thought of absent persons seems 
reported through the medium, in the manifestations of 
our day. Suffice it to say, that Cicero, and men further 
back than he, referred all those cases to the action of 
the " Soul of the World " of Plato and the Indian phi- 
losophers, to the " animal spirits " of Descartes, to the 
" plastic spirit of the world " of Mather and Brattle's 
time, to the " nervous principle " of the modern physi- 
ologist. What has such a universal and uniform history 
must have a law. We may confidently trust there is a 
science here ; though what it is, man may never know. 1 
Is it not now apparent, Charles, when we remember 
that the " Soul of the World " of the Platonist, and the 
11 nature " of the Stoics, as seen in men excited by any 
natural cause, and the "nervous principle" now spoken 
of by the physiologist, are the same, — is it not apparent, 
as Cicero seems to conclude, 2 that different minds, after 
all, must reach about the same conclusion ? The super- 
natural of the one is the natural of the other. The 
Platonic Cicero has his representatives now ; and so 

1 Ibid, i., 20 et seq. As a modern instance, see "Watchman <fc 
Reflector," Boston, Oct. 14, 1852, vol. xxxiii., p. 168. See, also, 
Let. Fourth, p. 35, and Let. Tenth, p. 119. 

2 Ibid, ii., 72. 

8* 



90 homer's shades spiritually seen. 

have the Druid and Stoic, as well as the Aristote- 
lian. 

Galen makes special mention of the books of the 
Greeks. It is but a glance at what the great writers 
of that cultured land have said of the spiritual medium 
we can take. 

Homer, writing in the infancy of his nation, speaks in 
the language of childhood of the spirit-world ; like our 
own Shakspeare, representing spiritual manifestations as 
simple objects of sense. The spirits all bear the simple 
title " god ; " and have an ethereal body in which they 
appear to men. As always, however, the unphiloso- 
phizing poet shows the belief that it was not the bodily 
eye which saw the spirits ; but, the mind in dreamy rev- 
ery, or in excited fancy, by the spiritual medium appre- 
hended the vision. Achilles was first thoroughly con- 
vinced of the reality of the future life, and the spirit- 
world, when the shade of Patroclus, his slaughtered 
friend, appeared to him in a dream of the night ; l and 
it was the still active nervous excitement, such as we 
often in broken slumbers experience, which painted 
the image before his mind's eye. In the intense ardor 
of hot debate, again, Achilles felt the hand and saw the 
glistening eye of the goddess Minerva, checking him ; 
while no one under less nervous excitement beheld her. 2 
With Hesiod commenced the philosophic theories of the 
Greeks as to the world of disembodied spirits, and the 

1 Homer's Iliad, B. xxm., verses 62, 105. 

2 Ibid, B. i., verses 197, 198. 



SPIRITUAL CHAIN. 91 

connection we have with it. Hesiod, we are told, was 
the first of the Greeks to suggest that sublime concep- 
tion, that all spiritual beings and material existences 
are united by a chain (vsigci), so that a positive influ- 
ence and movement can be exerted by one spirit on 
other spirits and bodies. In his writings the word 
" demons " is first fixed, as signifying these intermediate 
agents and influences. 1 Pythagoras followed ; and by 
him and his pupils was built up that majestic theory 
which is described in the " Soul of the World," by 
Timaeus ; that almost Newton-like theory of mutual 
attractions, which holds worlds in their places, and makes 
them give forth, as they move in their orbits, the 
11 music of the spheres." 2 Socrates, the popular and 
practical philosopher of Athens, as Xenophon records, 
performed the accustomed sacrifices which made up the 
external religion of his countrymen ; and he employed 
divination as a means of gaining knowledge not attain- 
able in the natural methods. Yet his countrymen 
doubted his hearty belief in these. Socrates' real belief 
was this : " The people who sought knowledge of the 
future through sacrifices, birds and fortuitous events, did 
not suppose that the birds knew the future ; but that the 
gods communicated through them. Thus he believes. 
He thought men should use their own judgment in de- 
ciding about their affairs. Through the demon (to 
dai/uoviov), the spiritual medium, the gods (dsol) did, 

1 See Eschenberg, and various authorities. 

2 History of Philosophy; transl. from the French* by Henry, 
107 — 110, and various authorities. 



92 HARMONIOUS GRECIAN VIEW. 

in divination, communicate with men ; but it was wrong 
to inquire from them about trifling matters ; for though 
they know all things, yet they made revelations only 
of human duty." 1 Plato perfected that system which 
resolved all immaterial principles (the chemical and 
capillary attractions between particles of matter, the 
magnetic attraction drawing material bodies to each 
other, and the wider attraction holding worlds in their 
places) into one " circle," or ring, of influences. These, 
as we have seen, he distinguished from pure spirit, 
the ultimate cause of existences, the Divinity ; and 
through this intermediate system of agency, excited by 
the desire of the inquirer, he accounted for the won- 
derful knowledge and wonderful influences gained from 
divination and incantation. 2 

We part with the reflective Greek as from the prac- 
tical Roman, having gathered from him the same 
views. From Hippocrates to Aristotle, as we have 
seen, the practical Greek reasoned as did the French 
Academy about animal magnetism. Even the pure 
rationalist, who was the leading type of the Greek 
mind, we now behold receiving the facts, and referring 
them to three classes of causes still bearing Grecian 
names, " physiological, psychological, demoniacal." The 
latter is their name for the spiritual medium. 

1 Xenophon's Memorabilia, Lib. i., cap. i., §§ 2, 9, and 19 ; 
also, Let. Seventh, p. 77. 

2 Sse Cicero, Plutarch and Galen, as already quoted, pp. 78,81, 
85. 



ttiitx Iint)i. 



THE MAGICAL DISPLAY OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM AS 

UNDERSTOOD AND PRACTISED IN ANCIENT AND 

MODERN INDIA AND EGYPT. 



" Quaesisti, fili carissime, de incantatione, adjuratione et suspensions, si 
qua possunt prodesse, et si invenerim in libris Graecorum hoc, qualiter 
in libris Indorum est invenire." — Galen. 

[You have asked, dearest son, concerning incantation, adjuration, and 
the wearing of amulets j whether they can serve any curative purpose 5 and 
whether I have found this in the books of the Greeks, as it is found in the 
books of the Hindoos.] 

" The art of divination, as practised in our temples, is derived from 
Egypt. * * * These ceremonies in Greece are but of modern date; 
whereas in Egypt they have been in use from the remotest antiquity." — 
Herodotus. 



Champollion's Clues. — Wonders of India. — Serpents charmed. 

— Nervous Swoons. — Detecting Thieves. — Man buried a 
Month. — Religious Trances. — Nervous Contest — Stone raised. 

— Brazen Vessel moved. — Uniform Explanation. — Trial by 
Rice. — " Special Agent." — Fearful Initiation. — Magic an 
Art. — Hindoo Philosophy of Magic. — Serpent Charmers in 
Egypt. — Serpent drawn from Wall. — Goat Charmer. — His- 
tory of Charms. — Magnetizing Magician. — Clairvoyance in 
Egypt. — " Special Agent " universal. — A Law. — Ancient 
History uniform. — Blindfold Somnambule. — Healing by Mag- 
netism. — Phenomena ever the same. 

My Dear Charles: 

While Champollion was during twenty long years 
bending his acute mind to the search for a key to deci- 
pher Egyptian hieroglyphic records, he had three clues 
to guide him in the labyrinth. He had the modern 



94 WONDERS OF INDIA. 

Coptic language and the ancient Egyptian monuments 
as the extremes. He had also stumbled on an obscure 
passage in that old Christian Father, Clement of Alex- 
andria, describing the principle of hieroglyphic writing 
as in his day still practised ; and this, together with the 
Greek tablet of the Rosetta stone, formed the means 
for his comparison. We too, Charles, have modern 
scenes in India and Egypt, and ancient Hindoo books and 
Egyptian monuments, for our extremes. We have also 
stumbled on an old Christian scholiast who describes to 
us the principle of the magical display of the spiritual 
medium, which he tells us he gained from " most ancient 
monuments ; " and this, with the Greek and Roman 
authorities intervening, is our means for comparison. 

Enter we, then, old India, the land whose name from 
the days of Alexander, and even Solomon, has been but 
a synonym for boundless wealth, but whose reputation 
as the fountain-head of science, philosophy and myste- 
rious arts, dates back to an even earlier day. We can 
trace in her history, in unbroken series, magical displays 
of the power of the spiritual medium, such as throw 
into the shade all we of this New World have yet seen. 
So wondrous are they that intelligent English officers, 
physicians, clergymen and general scholars, who have 
gone thither sceptical and prejudiced, have reported in 
numberless authenticated narratives the story of their 
convincing eye-sight, and have declared that the half 
was not told them in their land. 

Serpents and birds are drawn and held as by a 
charm. An eminent physician, sceptical on this point, 



SERPENTS CHARMED NERVOUS SWOON. 95 

in company with other English gentlemen, thus tested 
the fact. Taking a serpent charmer alone, they brought 
him to a distant heap of rubbish ; and, causing him to 
lay off all his raiment, that there might be no deception 
practised upon them, they watched his movements. 
Approaching the pile with a serpent-like hiss, and a 
nervous working of the features and limbs, which be- 
came more and more excited and violent, presently serpent 
after serpent of the most venomous kind showed their 
heads, and gradually moved towards the charmer ; until, 
reaching out his hand, he took them as so many lifeless 
withes, and deposited them in his basket. 1 Numberless 
attested instances of a similar kind might be given ; the 
operator winding the serpent about his neck, pressing it 
fold after fold into his mouth, and rendering it rigid as 
a stick or pliant as a cord, at his pleasure. Back to the 
most ancient days this power can be traced. Aelian, a 
Greek writer of the fourth century, describes the same 
power as exhibited at his day, and says that it is a fac- 
ulty handed down in certain families, from father to son, 
uninterruptedly. 2 

By throwing themselves into a nervous swoon, females, 
as well as men trained to the art, do succeed in relieving 
certain bodily diseases, and in discovering the place 
where stolen property is hid, and the persons who have 
taken it. 3 The following instance g ; ves a description of 

1 « Modern India, by Henry H. Spry, M.D., F.R.S.,M.R.A.S., 
Bengal Medical Staff, London, 1837;" vol. I., pp. 209 et seq. 

2 Aelian, Lib. n., cap. 57. 

3 " Description of the Character, Manners and Customs, of the 



96 MAN BURIED A MONTH. 

the process. A crowd gathered near the house of an 
English resident, an author, near Benares. Some per- 
sons wished to gain information of stolen goods ; and an 
old woman, a practiser of the art of divining, had been 
brought from the city. The crowd sat down in a circle 
around in the open field, and the woman was placed in 
the centre. Soon she began to rock and roll as if in 
spasms, her agitation becoming more and more violent, 
until, in a paroxysm of frenzy, she threw herself on the 
ground, and rolled convulsed. The interrogators listened 
to her mutterings, and from them learned where their 
property was to be found. 1 Of this power of throwing 
one's self into a voluntary swoon cases almost incredible 
are reported. The same English writer just quoted 
reports an instance which " some European officers, 
whose evidence seemed unimpeachable, asserted in writ- 
ing that they saw." A devotee, on a wager, submitted 
to the following test. After giving directions what 
should be done to him, he threw himself into a swoon. 
He was then sewed in a bag, placed in a box, and buried 
in a tomb built of solid brick-work. The door was then 
bricked up and sealed, and sentries placed before it for 
a whole month. The tomb was then opened, and his 
body taken out. His mouth, as he directed beforehand, 
was pried open, and a little milk poured into it ; and, 
though he had been without food, drink and air, for thirty 
days, he revived and sat up. The next day he was able 

People of India, by the Abbe J. A. Dubois, transl. from a French 
manuscript, Philadelphia, 1818;" vol. n., part n., chap. 36. 

1 " Recollections of Northern India, by Rev. Wm. Buyers, Lon- 
don, 1848," p. 374. 



NERVOUS CONTEST — - STONE RAISED. 97 

to mount a camel and start off on a journey, expressing 
himself in very indignant terms that the parties who 
had put him to the test did not remunerate him more 
liberally for his trouble. The writer adds, " I read 
a few weeks ago, in an Indian paper, that the same 
devotee had repeated the same feat at some other place, 
with equal success." l No one accustomed to witness the 
swooning of persons under strong religious excitement, 
especially of the colored race, in certain sections of our 
country, can help believing in the reality of these nerv- 
ous trances. What mysterious influences may be seen 
working during them, facts alone can decide. 

A wondrous power over the nervous influence of 
others, and over material objects, is seen in the Indian 
devotee. The French writer before quoted 2 records 
the following instance. Two rivals wish to attest their 
superior powers. A stone or piece of money is placed 
on the ground, and the trial is to see which will first 
raise it without touching it. They advance towards 
the object, opposite each other, flinging " enchanted cin- 
ders" and reciting " mantras; " when both, by " an in- 
visible but irresistible force," are repelled and driven 
back. They again approach, with new effort and excite- 
ment, the sweat pouring from them and blood gushing 
from their mouths, until one of them gets possession of 
the stone or piece of money. Sometimes one of the 
combatants is thrown violently on the ground by the 
nervous power of his antagonist ; and, taken up breath- 

1 Buyer's Northern India, pp, 369, 370. 

2 Dubois' People of India, vol. n., chap. 36, 

9 



98 BRAZEN VESSEL MOVED. 

less, he lies for days as if weakened by sickness. r *« 
writer thinks that there is some collusion and deception 
in these strange phenomena; but he remarks, " It must 
be owned that effects are occasionally produced by them 
of which it would not be easy to divine the cause. r 
The reader familiar with Mather's records of witch- 
craft will remember that he has recorded instances of a 
similar unaccountable nervous repulsion ; the hand of a 
person striking at an imaginary image flying back, as if 
repelled by an irresistible force. 1 

Instances of the moving of material objects, particularly 
metallic, " without touching " them, far more palpable 
than that just mentioned, may be cited. An English 
writer 2 just cited records the following. A friend of 
his, after reading in his Bible one day, laid down his 
gold spectacles ; and, having gone out a short time, 
when he returned he found his spectacles were gone. 
He knew that no person, except his servants, of whom 
he had fifteen or sixteen, could have entered the room. 
Calling them, he charged the theft upon them. To clear 
themselves, the servants all declared the Brahmin should 
be brought, to find out which was the thief. The 
Brahmin, having come, ranged all the servants in a row 
on one side of the room, while the gentleman himself 
stood by, watching the proceedings. Stationing himself 
in the centre of the room, which was a large hall, the 
Brahmin placed a small brazen vessel before him, and 
muttered some incantations. Then, leaving the vessel, he 

i Mather's Magnalia, Book vi., p. 75. 
2 Buyer's Northern India, p. 375. 



UNIFORM EXPLANATION. 99 

declared that, if the thief were in the room, it would, of 
itself, move to him. To the great astonishment of all, 
the vessel began to move, with no visible hand near it, 
and, sliding apparently of its own accord along the floor, 
it went straight to one of the servants. The man con- 
fessed the theft, and produced the missing spectacles. 
The writer concludes, " My old friend was no believer in 
the supernatural powers claimed by these men ; but he 
was quite confounded at the result, and could never 
venture an explanation of the curious affair." 

A glance now at the views of the source of these 
phenomena entertained in all ages in India is most 
instructive. The popular belief at the present day is 
that these manifestations are supernatural. 1 The intel- 
ligent observer finds a resort to physiological law, which 
in part explains them ; the serpent charmer using from 
childhood a drug, whose properties become infused 
through his system ; 2 and the Brahmins using incense in 
their incantations, to produce a similar influence on 
themselves and others. 3 To a psychological cause, 
the influence of fear on both mind and body, the 
learned student has referred a part of the phenomena ; 
such a reporter giving the following general practice as 
an illustration. 4 When a theft has been committed in a 
house, the Brahmin is called and the whole family 
assembled. Sitting in the centre of the circle, the 

1 Spry's Modern India, vol. n., p. 125. 

2 Dubois' People of India, vol. n., chap. 36. 
s Ibid. 

4 Spry's Modern India, p. 31. 



100 FEARFUL INITIATION. 

Brahmin produces a little brass balance, and, putting a 
mysterious old rupee into one scale, he deals out a por- 
tion of rice equal to its weight to each one of the circle. 
Calling then on each to eat his portion, he declares that 
the rice in the culprit's mouth will remain dry and 
unmasticated. Fear so acts on the guilty person's 
nervous system that he cannot eat. 1 The Brahmin 
knows this ; and his trial is generally successful. 

Yet back of these causes, or superadded to them, 
is another, unexplained, the " special agent " of the 
French Academy. The facts are the same, the cause 
manifestly is the same, and the reasoning of intelligent 
men in all ages as to that cause has been the same, with 
what we have beheld in many another land and age. 
One writer refers it to the power called mesmeric. 2 
He pictures also the appalling scene of initiation 3 to 
which the practisers of these arts subject every one 
who would enter their fraternity. In the dense jungle, 
far from human habitation, over a charcoal fire a small 
brass kettle filled with mysterious ingredients is placed, 
and around it in a circle skulls and bones are strewn. 
By this kettle, in this hideous circle, with tigers and 
hyenas prowling around, the candidate is all night long 
to remain seated, gazing at and stirring its contents. 4 
If, unmoved, never for a moment diverted, he persists all 
night, that is a man who has any imaginable command 

1 As the agitated speaker has a dry voice ; the calm, a clear, mel- 
low one. 

2 Buyer's Northern India, p. 369. 3 Do., p. 372. 

4 The admirer of Shakspeare will remember the counterpart of 
this scene in Macbeth, Act iv., Scene 1st 



HINDOO PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC. 101 

over his nervous system. The whole appearance and the 
entire proceedings of these devotees indicate that it is 
the nervous principle which they employ in working the 
wonders which every intelligent observer is convinced 
are real. 

Going back to the ancients, we find their view agree- 
ing in that we have already considered. Back to India, 
as the mother of the art, they all refer the facts, and 
the philosophy of those facts. Pliny ascribes the origin 
of magic to Zoroaster ; and the renowned magician from 
whom Nero sought to learn his art was a Chaldean. 1 In 
the earliest times it was an art, a secret knowledge of 
natural principles; one, however, which a Nero could 
not buy. Galen mentions the " Indian physicians " as 
healing by incantation, through knowledge of a hidden 
principle of our nature, similar to the attractive power 
of the magnet. Most of all, to the books of the Indians 
Galen especially refers. 2 Through the laborious studies 
of Colebroke 3 European scholars have regained the 
knowledge, familiar to the Greeks and Romans, that 
India is the fountain-head of that philosophy which 
Plato and Cicero, and the idealist of every age since, 
has agreed in ; either adopting it from others, or having 
it suggested by his own peculiar bent of mind. In 
India, in the earliest days, prevailed the theory 4 that 

i See Let. Seventh, p. 80. 2 Ibid, p. 81. 

3 Essays by Colebroke, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of 
London, from 1824 to 1829. 

4 See Epitome of History of Philosophy, translated from the 
French by Dr. Henry, pp. 24, 25, 35, 36. 

9# 



102 SERPENT CHARMER IN CAIRO. 

all qualities, all attracting influences in nature (which 
we know to be intermediate between spirit and matter), 
make up the soul of the world, of which human spirits 
are a part ; through which, since in it there is an active 
and a passive, a negative and a positive force, one man's 
soul can control another's soul and body, and move 
material objects, as teaches the scholiast of the middle 
ages. 1 Cousin, the great historian of ancient and mod- 
ern philosophy, echoes this statement, when, in speaking 
of Indian mysticism, he quotes and adopts Colebroke's 
exposition of the nature of magic. u This power consists 
in being able to take all forms ; ^ ^ it consists in 
changing the course of nature, and in acting upon inani- 
mate as well as upon animate things." 2 

Turn we now to Egypt. Make with me, Charles, a 
day's tour of examination about Cairo, the present capi- 
tal of that country, and observe we the wonders now 
exhibited there. Mounted on our little donkeys, we pat- 
ter along the narrow crowded alleys, to the bazaar. As 
we approach this covered mart, towards which the crowd 
all day throng, among the innumerable novel scenes 
around see seated yonder the serpent charmer. Forth 
from his covered basket he draws a fearful, poisonous 
snake. He coils him about his neck like a ribbon ; he 
puts his head into his mouth, and presses in fold after 
fold of his body, till even the tail is shut in and con- 
cealed, and then draws him slowly forth again. Again, 

1 See Letter Sixth, p. 63. 

2 " Cours de Philosophic," translated by H. 0. Wight, second 
series, vol. n. s Sect. 6. 



GOAT CHARMED. 103 

he stretches him straight like a rod, and lays him on 
the ground, while so like a stick he seems, so stiff and 
motionless, you might readily pick him up for a cane. 
His power over the serpent is not the extracting of his 
deadly fangs, for you see them glistening in his mouth. 
Nor is it that the serpent has been domesticated ; for, 
as you pass on, you may see another of these serpent 
charmers, who has been called to draw forth and cap- 
ture a serpent hid under a house, or within its walls, 
seated for an hour before the hole which the serpent has 
entered, and looking intently at it with a flushed and 
nervous aspect, hissing the mean while, until you behold 
the untamed and deadly intruder drawn slowly forth 
from his lurking-place towards the charmer, who takes 
him like a coil of cord harmless in his hand, and places 
him in his basket. Moreover, a little further on you may 
see a goat perched on the slender point of a rod, and 
slowly raised higher and higher, while his master sings 
with more and more of frenzy ; till suddenly the song 
and nervous influence cease, the charm is broken, and the 
little animal falls like a dead weight from his pointed 
perch. No beholder can doubt that by the power of the 
nervous principle the charmer has control over the vital 
nervous energy of the animate creation. 

From time immemorial, now, this same power has been 
seen in Egypt, and described. The ablest English resi- 
dent writers have pictured it. 1 The French savans, under 

i Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyp- 
tians, V E. W. Lane, London, 1836; vol. n., chap. vn.,pp. 103, 
104 



104 MAGNETIZING MAGICIAN. 

Napoleon, fifty years ago, extensively investigated it, 1 
learning that it was a secret art, handed down like the 
ancient mysteries of Egypt. The ancient Greeks and 
Romans found the practisers of this art in Egypt ; the 
Greeks calling them by the expressive name " Psylli," 
or spiders. Strabo, among many allusions to it, espec- 
ially describes this power over the serpent, as seen in 
Egypt. Aelian further relates, " They are said to be 
enabled, by a magical art, to bring down birds from 
heaven, and to charm serpents so as to make them come 
forth from their lurking-places at command." 2 The 
student of the past, who has learned to give a high place 
among authentic historic records to the books of Moses, 
will have no hesitation in recognizing the same art at an 
earlier date of Egyptian history. 3 

Ride we now to behold a similar power exercised on 
the human frame, and a control more mysterious exer- 
cised on rational minds. The famed magician, Sheikh 
Abd-el Kader, seated on a mat in his little room, orders 
a brasier of burning coals to be brought and placed at 
his side, while he sits writing on slips of paper invo- 
cations to the spirits. A boy is called, on the palm 
of whose hand the magician draws a rude square, with 
inner lines parallel to each side. In the eight outer 

1 See Description de l*Egypt, Etat Moderne, Tome Second, II. e 
Partie, pp. 5, 22, 23 ; also Egypt and the Books of Moses, by 
Hengstenberg, trans, by Bobbins, Andover, 1843, pp. 100 — 105, 
and his references to Quatremere. 

2 Aelian, Lib. u cap. 57 ; and Strabo, Book xiii., p 588 ; and 
Book xvn., p. 814. 

SExod. 7: 11, 12. 



CLAIRVOYANCE IN EGYPT. 105 

compartments thus formed are inscribed in Indian (or 
Hindoo, showing the origin of the art) eight of the nine 
numerals, the figure five being placed in one corner 
of the central compartment. 1 In the centre a drop of 
ink from the magician's horn is deposited. Placing now 
his brasier between the boy and himself, and telling him 
to look intently at the ink-drop, the magician takes in 
his hand his slips of paper on which he has written his 
invocations. These slips of paper, each with a handful 
of incense, he throws, one after another, into the fire ; 
muttering, meantime, the same invocations, till the 
smoke and perfume is almost overpowering and bewil- 
dering to the senses. All these preliminaries, the 
magical numbers, the burning incense, the invocations, 
are but impressive accompaniments of his real art, as 
we have already learned from the ancients. Then is seen 
his real power. Now, partly in leading questions, but 
soon without them, he causes the boy to see and describe 
whatever his own imagination chooses. Then, when 
sufficiently under his influence, the boy goes on to de- 
scribe scenes known only to the spectators ; persons and 
places in England and America, of which no one but 
the inquirer himself has knowledge. Sir Gardner 
Wilkinson, only once beholding this performance, and 
in that one trial having sent for the magician to come 
to a foreigner's house and to appear before a dignified 
circle, naturally might not make due allowance for the 
disturbing nervous influence thus exerted on the per- 

1 Lane's Modern ^gypt, vol. r. a chap, xii., pp. 347—357. 



106 ANCIENT HISTORY UNIFORM. 

former ; l just as Franklin and the first French com- 
mission beheld Mesmer's experiments under such a 
disturbing influence, and, therefore, at first, underrated 
them. But the able Mr. Lane, 2 long a resident in the 
East, and hundreds of ordinary observers, have witnessed 
a real unmistakable agent at work, similar to that 
admitted even by that first French commission. The 
power thus seen in different lands, and among different 
classes of men, must be a natural agent, placed by the 
Creator in all men ; mysterious indeed, unexplained 
and perhaps inexplicable, yet real. Moreover, this 
influence is not modern, but ancient ; in the East, as 
we have seen in Europe, 3 capable of being traced back 
indefinitely in the history of human nature. In the 
earliest times a distinction was made between the science 
and the art, between the use and abuse of this mysteri- 
ous power ; and all persons convicted of witchcraft were 
debarred from initiation into the sacred mysteries of 
Egypt. 4 The modes of practising sacred divination 
were the same ; Clement of Alexandria describing " the 
prophet" in the Egyptian festival " carrying in his bosom 
a water jar," 5 the gastromantia, so common in later 

1 Hand-book for Egypt, by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, F.R.S., &c. 
(Murray) London, 1847, pp. 151 — 154. 

2 Lane's Modern Egypt, vol. i., chaps, xi. and xii. 
s See Let. Fifth, p 47. 

4 Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, by J. G. 
Wilkinson, F.R.S., M.R.S.L., &c. London, 1837. Second Series, 
vol. ii., p. 324. 

5 Clem. Alex. Stromata, B. vi., p. 196 ; quoted by Wilkinson 
in his Second Series, vol. n., p. 279. 



HEALING BY MAGNETISM. 107 

ages, being an art of ancient Egypt. The ends aimed 
at were the same ; the Egyptian oracles being consulted 
in cases of theft, and large rewards being paid by princes 
for successful information obtained. 1 The influence seen 
to be exerted was the same ; Macrobius describing the 
priests bearing the images of the Heliopolitan deity as 
" borne on by a divine spirit, not at their own will, but 
whither the god impelled them ;" and Herodotus men- 
tioning that at the festival of Sais one of the priests 
was led " blindfold " to a spot, where, being left, he 
went (really alone, though, as the people believed, led 
by two wolves) a distance of twenty stadia (about two 
and three-fourths miles), to the temple of Ceres, and 
back ; 2 which certainly resembles the blindfold guiding 
of the somnambule now seen. What is more inter- 
esting, the process of healing by Egyptian art seems 
the same as that now practised. Pliny describes the 
serpent charmers as having this healing power. " By 
contact" with the persons affected, "they are accus- 
tomed to alleviate the bite of serpents ; and by laying 
on their hand, to extract poisons from the body." 3 
Strabo more fully describes the process thus : " The 
males among these people, they say, heal those who 
are bitten by a viper, by repeatedly touching upon 
(ovvexus styuTiTOfizvovs) the person, as the magicians 
are accustomed to do ; and thus they transfer to them- 

1 Wilkinson, Second Series, vol. I., p. 153. 

2 Macrob. Saturn., i., 30 ; Herodt. n., 122 ; quoted by Wilkin- 
son, Second Series, vol. n., pp. 298 and 310. 

3 Pliny, Lib. lx., cap. 2. 



108 ANCIENT ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 

selves, first the livid hue, then the inflammation, and 
quiet the pain." 1 Here, then, we learn that in the 
most ancient times in Egypt, the " magicians " were ac- 
customed to practise an art the very counterpart of the 
magnetizing of our day ; while the " Psylli," or the ser- 
pent charmers, by the same process, actually wrought 
cures. Diodorus mentions that through dreams the 
Egyptian physicians sought a knowledge of the remedies 
proper to be prescribed for disease ; 2 while, however, 
they closely examined the case itself, using their own 
judgment ; thus showing that it was by an art, not by 
supernatural but by natural methods, they gained this 
knowledge. In referring to this, Wilkinson alludes to 
the fact that " the advocates of animal magnetism may 
see it in this passage." In immediate connection he thus 
alludes to the monuments of the ancient Egyptians : 
" Though their physicians are often mentioned by Hero- 
dotus and other writers, the only indication of medical 
attendance occurs in the paintings of Beni Hassan, 
where a doctor and patient are twice represented." 3 In 
both these representations the patient is on his knees, 
with one hand taking hold of the upper part of his 
other arm, and with the other hand grasping the calf 
of the physician's leg. In both the physician holds one 
hand on the head of the patient, while with the other 

1 Strabo, Lib. xni., p. 588. See word Psylli in the Index for 
other references. 

2 Diodorus Sieulus, Book I., § 25. 

3 Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 
Elrst Series, vol. in., p. 393 ; also, see Note on the same page. 



PHENOMENA MOST ANCIENT. 109 

hand, in one case, he administers a dose of medicine, 
and, in the other case, uses a surgical instrument. In 
a representation of a lady in the bath, two attendants 
seem to be making the mesmeric passes upon her; 
while a third holds to her nose a lotus-flower, appar- 
ently as an exhilarating drug. 1 

We have followed up our clue far back into the dark 
past, to find the fast end of this historic chain. And 
now, to fix our last deep impression of the uniform mys- 
teries of the spiritual medium, listen we to a single 
sentence or two from the very oldest of the Grecian 
historians. As to the uniform existence of these phe- 
nomena in all ages, the same writer says : " The art of 
divination, as now practised in our temples, is derived 
from Egypt. * ^ These ceremonies in Greece are 
but of modern date ; whereas in Egypt they have been 
in use from the remotest antiquity" As to the uni- 
form likeness of these manifestations, that earliest of 
travelled writers describes as seen in his day cases of 
witchcraft, and trials and executions for it as demo- 
niacal even in. barbarous Scythia, which are the very 
counterpart of those lately seen in Salem. 2 

1 Wilkinson's Man. and Oust, of Anct. Egyptians, First Series, 
vol. in., p. 389; also Let. Eleventh, p. 133. 

2 Herodotus, Book 17., § 68 ; Book 11., §§ 54, 56, 58. 



tttiti € But if 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM IN ANCIENT 

EGYPT AND ASSYRIA CONTRASTED WITH AND 

MADE TO ESTABLISH THE SUPERNATURAL 

IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



" And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." " Now 
the magicians of Egypt, they also did the same with their enchantments ; 
for they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But 
Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods." "Then the magicians said unto 
Pharaoh, This is the finger of God." — Acts 7 : 22 ; Exod. 7: 11, 12; 
8: 19. 

And Daniel was taught " the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans." 
" Then the king made Daniel chief over the wise men of Babylon," " master 
of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers." " The Chal- 
deans said, There is none other that can show it before the king, except the 
gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh." But " Daniel answered in the 
presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded 
cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians., the soothsayer!? , show 
unto the king. But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets." — 
Daniel 1 : 4 5 2 : 11, 48 5 5 : 11 ; 2 : 27. 



Old Testament "antiquated." — Science reveres Scripture. - — Sci- 
ence behind Scripture. — Moses learned. — Eight Forms of 
Egyptian Mystery. — Not behind our Mysteries. — Scripture 
View of these. — Accredit Science. — Daniel among Magi. — 
Abuse of Science condemned. — The True Supernatural. — Ma- 
gician's Testimony. — Magi's Testimony. — Picture of an An- 
cient Medium. — Why Men seek them. — Contrast of Natural 
and Supernatural. — Penalty of Curiosity. — Ancients appre- 
ciated these Things. — Christian Scholar in Egypt. — " Our 
Rock not as theirs." 



My Dear Charles: 

Why should the impression have been so widely dis- 
seminated, within a few years past, in our Christian land, 



SCIENCE REVERES SCRIPTURE. Ill 

that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are 
antiquated books ; not to be regarded, in this age of ad- 
vanced science, as " written by holy men of old, who 
wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit " ? Surely, 
only superficial thinkers could ever come to such a con- 
clusion. When G-rotius, that master mind yet referred 
to by jurists of all nations as the founder of the science 
of international law, had spent his laborious life in com- 
paring the fundamental principles of right, as taught 
in all nations and in all ■ professedly sacred books, in- 
stead of arriving at the conclusion that the Old and 
New Testaments were antiquated books, he devoted 
some of his maturest years to the work of pointing out 
the imperfection and failure of all other religious sys- 
tems, and of confirming the perfection and divine origin 
of the Christian Scriptures. 1 When Newton, following 
up and surpassing Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler, 
had reached and demonstrated the great laws of astron- 
omy, instead of finding them in conflict with the Bible 
allusions, from being in youth a sceptic, he became in 
mature age one of the most enthusiastic believers in the 
revealed word of God. 2 When Champollion, taught to 
respect the early Christians by the aid one of them had 
given him, was traversing, after nearly twenty years' 
study of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the land of his eager 
research, and when, one evening, his boat's prow touched, 

1 The Truth of the Christian Religion, by Hugo G-rotius, trans- 
lated from the Latin by John Clarke, D.D. London, 1827. 

2 Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse. 
London, 1733. 



112 SCIENCE BEHIND SCRIPTURE. 

about sunset, the shore of old Thebes, and he leaped 
ashore, and ran, like a curious child, up to the great 
temple of Karnac, his enthusiasm was prompted by the 
desire to confirm what he had long contended for against 
his sceptical fellow-savans, that one of the sculptures on 
that temple represented Pharaoh Shishak leading cap- 
tive Rehoboam, King of Judah ; a fact which, that 
evening, with reverential joy, he was permitted to estab- 
lish, and thus to lay down this incident as an undisputed 
landmark, from which all comparative chronology of 
historical events may be surely reckoned. 1 The ablest 
geologists of our day are the warmest opponents of the 
idea that the Sacred Scriptures, as respects their science, 
are antiquated records. No man of science has ever 
studied the Old Testament without revering it. 

Why, then, in the infant development of these spir- 
itual phenomena, newly seen among us, — why should 
we suppose them to be in advance of the book we rever- 
ence as our only sure spiritual guide ? A very brief 
reflection, Charles, will impress the mind with the fact 
that the writers of these Scriptures, entirely aside 
from their divine inspiration, were far in advance of 
us in their knowledge of the spiritual medium, and its 
manifestations. The mere recollection in what age 
and among what men they lived, were educated and 
wrote, is enough to establish this. An added glance, 

1 Ancient Egypt, by Geo. R. Gliddon. New York, 1843. 
Chap i., p. 9; and Egypt's Place in Universal History, by Ch. 
C. J Bunsen, D.Ph., and D. C. L., translated by C. H. Cottrell, 
Esq London, 1848. Book i., sect, iii., pp. 164, 165. 



EIGHT FORMS OF EGYPTIAN MYSTERY. 113 

however cursory, at their frequent allusions to the phe- 
nomena witnessed in our day, will satisfy any sincere 
mind that the spiritual difficulties which the reflective 
of our day encounter are here all anticipated ; both the 
difficulty and the mode of meeting it being taught. 
Happy, thrice happy, the inquiring anxious spirit, that 
shall also here find an attested guide sent from heaven, 
to lead our doubtful, erring steps through this dark spir- 
itual pilgrimage of earth ! 

Moses, living in Egypt in the palmy days of her 
antiquity, and " learned in all the wisdom of the 
Egyptians," wrote the earliest, and, of course, the most 
difficult, of these volumes. Familiar with the power 
over spiritual influences, known to the initiated in his 
day, he specially mentions, in one connection, 1 eight 
different species of the practice of this control over the 
nervous influence. There was, first, " the user of 
divination ; " a mode of gaining knowledge of future 
3vents employed among the rude tribes, on the south 
of ancient Palestine ; 2 three kinds of which, by arrows, 
or rods, by sculptured images, and by the entrails of an- 
imals, are mentioned by Ezekiel ; 3 and the sin of which 
is characterized as rebellion against God. 4 There is, 
second, " the observer of times," or of dreams; 5 a reli- 
ance on dreams as revelations from the spirit world 
having been common in Egypt and Assyria, in Philistia 

1 Deut. 18 : 10. 2 Jo^. 13 : 22; 1 Sam. 6 : 2. 

3 Ezek. 21 : 21. U Sam. 15 : 23. 

5 See Vulgate. 

10* 



114 EIGHT FORMS OF EGYPTIAN MYSTERY. 

and among the Israelites, 1 as it was afterwards among 
the Greeks and Romans. There was, thirds the " en- 
chanter," or serpent charmer; 2 this practice seeming to 
have been accompanied with the same mutterings and 
charms now employed ; 3 the possessors of this art in the 
earliest times, and among various Eastern nations, being 
supposed able to reveal secrets of the spiritual world. 4 
There was, fourth, the "witch," or sorceress ; men and 
women who divined by administering to themselves, or 
to others, exhilarating and poisonous drugs, which acted 
like the mephitic gas of Delphi on the Pythoness, and 
like the modern magician's incense ; a class most dan- 
gerous in Egypt, Assyria, Canaan, and elsewhere. 5 
There was, fifth, the " charmer " by the power of song ; 
a mode of exerting a soothing or stupefying influence 
on the nervous system, both of beasts and men, now 
used in the East, mentioned by Xenophon as common in 
Greece, 6 and employed successfully, both on man and 
beast, among the ancient Israelites? There was, 
sixth, "the consulter of familiar spirits," the ven- 
triloquist, or the diviner by " basins " or vases, 8 alluded 

1 Gen. 40 : 8 et seq. Dan. 2 : 4 et seq. 2 Kings 21 : 6; 
2 Chron. 33 : 6; Isa. 2 : 6; Micah 5 : 12. 

2 See Septuagint. 3 Psal. 58 : 4, 5. 

4 Gen. 44 : 5: Lev. 19 : 26; Numb. 23 : 3, 15, 23 ; 24 : 1; 2 
Kings 17 : 17; 21 : 6. 

5 Exod. 7 : 11; 22 : 17; 2 Kings 9 : 22; 2 Ohron. 33 : 6; Isa. 
47 : 12; Jer. 27 : 9; Mic. 5 : 12; Nah. 3 : 4. 

6 Xen. Mem., II., v. 10, 11. 

7 See Sept. on 1 Sam. 16 : 23, and Ps. 58 : 6. 

8 Compare the Hebrew and Greek. 



NOT BEHIND OUR MYSTERIES. 



115 



to by Pliny and the Latin scholiast; a class of per- 
sons who excited a nervous influence in boys employed 
for their purposes, by causing them to gaze intently 
into the vases; from which they seemed to call up 
spirits of the dead, and to cause them to speak, while, 
really, they spoke from their own abdomens ; l a class 
of diviners common in remote antiquity. 2 There 
was, seventh^ the "wizard," the Magian, or wise 
one ; men, probably, who, from their own mental power, 
without added arts, had gained the reputation of su- 
pernatural knowledge. 3 There was, eighth, the " nec- 
romancer," or consulter of departed spirits. 4 Besides 
these varied classes of persons, believed to have super- 
natural power, there were yet other classes ; such as 
" the astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly prognostica- 
tors," mentioned by Isaiah. 5 Sufficient, certainly, are 
these, to show that the writers of the Old Testament 
were not behind our age, but far before it, in their ac- 
quaintance with the wonders of the spiritual medium. 

Most important is it now to observe what view of the 
character of these manifestations is presented by the 
inspired writers of the Old Testament. Three points 
here are instructive. In the first place, the facts are 
admitted, A real influence, mysterious in its charac- 

i Compare 1 Sam. 28 : 8, with Isa. 8 : 19 and 29 : 4. 

2 Lev. 19 : 31; 20 : 6, 37; Isa. 19 : 3; 2 Kings 21 : 6; 2 
Chron. 33 : 6. 

3 Mentioned Lev. 19 : 31; 20 : 6, 27. 

4 Found only Deut. 18 : 11; though other classes of diviners 
used this art, 1 Sam. 28 : 11. 

5 Isa. 47 : 13. 



116 SCIENCE IN THESE MYSTERIES. 

ter, is stated to be put forth. The Egyptian magicians 
do change their serpents into rods. Young David by 
the power of music does alleviate the nervous malady 
and suffering of Saul ; and a genuine prophet like 
Elisha sometimes sees fit to employ the minstreJ as an 
exciter of the spirit of prophecy. 1 

Again, the source of this influence is treated as natu- 
ral. Moses nowhere ascribes the power of the magicians 
to evil spirits. On the contrary, the two names 2 which 
he gives them are these : " sacred writers," the original 
word having come down through various intermediate 
tongues to our language, always in a good sense, and as 
a word of science; 3 and " learned men," a name dignified 
in the corresponding Greek, and a title of high respect 
still given by the modern Arab to those only among 
foreign travellers whom he thinks specially skilled in 
science and art. 4 Thoroughly acquainted with all the 
wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses recorded the facts he 
witnessed as exhibitions of the science and art of 
" learned men" and " sacred writers." As late as the 
days of Nebuchadnezzar of Assyria, the Hebrew Daniel 
calls the Chaldean Magi by the same honorable names ; 
he spends years in the study of their learning ; and he 
accepts office among them as a scientific fraternity. 5 

*Exod. 7: 12; 1 Sam. 16 : 23; 2 Kings 3: 15. 

2 Gen. 41 : 8 et seq.; Ex. 7: 11 et seq. 

3 See the word " character" in Webster; also the Hebrew. 

4 The title hakim. Compare Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books 
of Moses, chap, i., p. 29. 

5 Dan. 1: 4, 20; 2 : 2, 48; 5 : 11; also, Jer. 50: 35; Esther 
1: 13. 



ABUSE OF SCIENCE CONDEMNED. 117 

The latter is a name also expressly applied to Solomon 
and Daniel. 1 

In the third place, a resort to such excitements of the 
nervous system for the purpose of gaining knowledge of 
the future, and of spiritual truth, is condemned; and upon 
two grounds. There is an intellectual reason, founded in 
the very nature of our mental organism. Living men do 
not and should not expect to receive communications from 
the dead.' 2 To seek them is to waste time and energies 
that might be husbanded for a better purpose ; and if 
responses be received, they are just like the excited fan- 
cies, the brilliant but deceptive imaginings and utter- 
ances, of a man inebriated. 3 Yet more, there is a moral 
and religious reason. To resort to such means for gaining 
any knowledge, is to slight the noble and ample powers 
of arriving at all needful truth, which our Creator has 
given us as sufficient for their purpose ; and thus it is 
to dishonor him. 4 To trust to such means of spiritual 
knowledge, is to discard the established revelations which 
God has given to guide our souls to truth and duty here, 
and to heaven hereafter. 5 It is, in fine, to induce within 
ourselves such a derangement of the natural functions of 
both body and mind, such a disturbance of reason and 
sound judgment, and such error of feeling, thought and 

1 1 Kings 2: 9; Ezek. 28 : 3. Josephus, who is authority on 
questions of Jewish history, mentions in accordance with the Scrip- 
ture allusions Solomon's knowledge of magic; Ant. 8:2:5. 

2 Isa. 8 : 19. 

3 Deut. 18 : 12, 14; 1 Sam. 28 : 16; Hos. 4 : 11, 12. 
4 1 Sam. 15 : 23; Lev. 19 : 23. 

5 Deut. 18 : 15; 1 Sam. 28 : 6; Isa. 8 : 20 



118 MAGICIANS TESTIFY OF MOSES. 

action, as will fulfil the heathen maxim, " Whom the gods 
would destroy they first render insane ;" for death tem- 
poral and spiritual is the lot of him who thus trusts. 1 
For these reasons the statute is given, " Thou shalt not 
suffer a witch to live;" 2 the " witch" thus condemned 
being one who claims that the secret natural power she 
possesses is supernatural, and thus gains by false pre- 
tences an authority among men which only the laws of 
society and the laws of God can justly exert ; while our 
fathers, in strange oversight of the very spirit of the 
Mosaic statute, made it applicable to one who denied all 
supernatural power, and never sought any such au- 
thority. 

Most admirable and most satisfactory to a sincere 
mind, looking for truth, is the manner in which all these 
sources of unjustifiable knowledge are brought into con- 
trast with the really supernatural in the Old Testament, 
and are made to establish its claims as a revelation from 
God. Skilled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses, 
empowered with real supernatural power, seems directed 
first to perform those exhibitions which he knew the 
wise men of Egypt could copy. 3 Thus leading them on 
to perform all the wonders which they by their wisdom 
could accomplish, Moses showed the limit of natural 
power ; and he compelled them, thus committed, to ac- 
knowledge that limit, and to testify that the power with 
which he was gifted was supernatural? Thus, moreover, 

1 1 Chron. 10 : 13. 2 See Josephus Ant., n., xiii., § 3. 

3 Ex. 22 : 18. * Exo<?. 8 : 19. 



MAGI TESTIFY OF DANIEL. 119 

Moses' miracles were proved to Pharaoh to be the work- 
ing, not of one among many gods, not the power of a 
" God of the Hebrews" who had no control in Egypt ; 
but they were shown to be the working of the " one 
living and true God," who made and ruled all the world, 
and controlled the elements, and ruled the souls of men, 
in Egypt as well as in Canaan. 1 

Moreover, as this peculiar testimony was given by 
the first, so was it by the last in the line of divinely 
empowered men, through whom the Old Testament re- 
cords were given as an established revelation from God. 
Daniel, educated from childhood in Babylon, as Moses 
was in Egypt, being one of the learned class, known 
to be one of them, and eminent in all their wisdom, 
— Daniel is gifted with a new and unheard-of power. 2 
By study of the workings of the human mind, by 
knowledge of the fact that dreams are but continuations 
of our waking thoughts, purposes and wishes, presented 
to the mind often during sleep in distorted images, 
and by observing that what a man thus is thinking of 
night and day he will realize, — by natural wisdom 
the Assyrian Magi might so interpret a dream that its 
result should accurately follow, and thus the event seem 
to be foretold, when it really followed as a natural 
consequence from the dreamer's state of mind. 3 But, 
Daniel, with added supernatural power, receives knowl- 

1 Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, transl. by 
Bobbins, chap, n., pp. 96 — 100. 

2 Dan 1 : 4, 20; 2 : 48; 5 : 1], 12; compare 2 : 28, 47. 

3 See jet. Eighth, pp. 88, 89. 



120 PICTURE OF AN ANCIENT MEDIUM. 

edge of the forgotten dream, 1 as well as of the inter 
pretation. And thus even the Magi themselves acknowl- 
edge that Daniel has a power belonging " unto the gods 
only whose dwelling is not in the flesh ; " a power no 
one of their order ever possessed. 

What is thus seen to be established in reference to 
the first and the last of the Old Testament writers 
(that they had fully mastered all natural powers, and 
then received an added supernatural endowment), may 
be equally attested of all the sacred penmen interven- 
ing. In a living, speaking picture, one of a thousand 
like occurrences of that day, a writer 2 in the Old Testa- 
ment has been directed to embody the facts, and the 
lessons from those facts, which in all ages should give 
Heaven-sent instruction to men as to the mysteries of 
the spiritual medium. At dead of night, a man of tall, 
gigantic form, muffled in his robe and evidently seeking 
disguise, is seen entering the little village of Endor, 
and approaching the door of a " medium. " The law of 
God, given by Moses, strictly forbade the practice of 
her art ; and the statute, often a dead letter, had been 
rigidly enforced by Saul, the then King of Israel. He 
" had put away those that had familiar spirits and the 
wizards out of the land." It was not the civil law, 
however, that made that muffled man seek disguise. 
There is something always in the heart of man which 
makes him feel, when resorting to such sources of secret 
knowledge, that he is engaged in a business justly re- 
garded by intelligent men as a mark of superstitious 

i Compare Dan. 1: 20; 2 : 4, with Dan. 2 : 11, 28, 47. 
2 1 Sam. 28 : 3—20. 



WHY MEN SEEK THESE ARTS. 121 

weakness, if it be not criminal. There was a conscious 
shame which made the disguised man wish to hide his 
weakness from man, and a troubled conscience which 
took away his peace with God. A great crisis, a des- 
perate battle on the morrow, was pending ; and his 
agitated mind cherished the unhallowed longing to fore- 
know the event. There were then three divine modes 
of giving revelations to men ; three authorized methods 
given by God for gaining knowledge from the other 
world ; and it was by copying these that unholy art 
gained its power. These were through dreams, and 
through prophets, and through Urim, the emblem of 
revelation. But all these the anxious man had sought, 
and had received no response. It was as manifest that 
it was not the divine will to gratify his curiosity, as it 
is when now neither in nature, nor in our own con- 
sciousness, nor in the revealed word of God, can we find 
all we crave to know. Agitated in spirit, cherishing in 
heart " rebellion like the sin of witchcraft " because he 
could learn no more, the proud yet pusillanimous war- 
rior was stealing now at dead of night, like many another, 
to consult the medium of the village. A knock is heard 
at her low door ; and, as it turns on its hinges in the 
dim light, a female form is seen suspiciously approach- 
ing. " I pray thee," breaks on her ear from the muffled 
warrior, " divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and 
bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee." She 
hesitates, and expresses her fears. " Behold," says she, 
" thou knowest what Saul hath done ; how he hath cut 
off them that have familiar spirits out of the land." 
11 



122 C3NTR^ST OF NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL. 

Assured, however, of safety, she begins her incantations. 
She was mistress of the art gastromantia, 1 a ventrilo- 
quist ; one of a " learned " class, 2 who really foretold at 
times accurately future events. 3 Like her fellows of 
the same art, we may imagine her bringing forth her 
water- vase, and burning her incense; thus, through 
nervous excitement, really expecting to see reported the 
thought, the secret wish, of her inquirer ; as now, through 
the nervous principle or spiritual medium, it seems to 
be. But, suddenly, — since it is Saul, the King of 
Israel himself, that is there as inquirer, and since the 
occasion justifies such an interposition, — to the terror 
of the diviner herself, not an image of the excited fancy, 
but a real form arises ; an "old man covered with a man- 
tle " comes up ! God has seen fit to send Samuel him- 
self in bodily form, with a real mantle that can be seized 
hold upon, to rebuke the impiety, the irreverent curiosity, 
of him who thus sought knowledge through the undue 
excitement of the nervous principle, through the diseased 
manifestation of the spiritual medium. 4 Forth goes that 

1 See the Hebrew, and the Greek of the Septuagint version ; 
also, Josephus and others. 

2 Josephus 5 Antiquities, Book vr., chap, xiv., § 4. 

3 Rabbi Salomo, on Deut. 18 : 11, says, " This person, like the 
ventriloquist, so called at Athens, prophesied true things through 
a demon having possession of him." Quoted by Wetstein, on Matt. 
17 : 15. 

4 This was the view of the ancient Jews ; see in the Apocrypha 
Ecnlesiasticus 46: 20. It is also the view of Sir Walter Scott, 
wl ose thorough study of the history of this entire subject certainly 
entitles his opinion to have weight. See Letters on Demonology 



CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR IN EGYPT. 123 

mighty monarch as we should expect such an one to go ; 
as must all those who daily and nightly allow themselves 
to suffer such a deranging excitement. Reason is be- 
dimmed, and judgment wavers in its enthroned seat; 
his nerves are unstrung, and there is no steadiness in his 
purpose, and no firmness in his action. He is, like 
hundreds who are following him, a lost man ; and speed- 
ily he rushes upon his self-prepared ruin, and falls by 
his own suicidal hand. 

In this distant age, in this remote land, it is impossi- 
ble, Charles, that we should fully enter into the spirit of 
this divinely drawn picture. Could we carry our minds 
back to ancient times, could we transport ourselves, 
for instance, to the land of Egypt, and live there, as it 
were, with Clement of Alexandria, and the men of his 
time, far more deeply should we feel the contrast 
between all these varied wonders of the spiritual medium 
alluded to in the Old Testament, and the truly super- 
natural, by which God confirmed his ancient revelation 
as divine. Turn to the pages of that strong-minded, 
clear-headed father, who opened to Champollion's mind 
the system of hieroglyphic writing. 1 Follow him through 
his description of the mysteries of Egypt, and the won- 
drous science of India and Egypt, which lay at the basis 
of those mysteries. 2 Mark how, living as he did in the 

and Witchcraft. New York, 1830; Harper's Fam. lib., vol. xi., 
Letter in., pp. 58 — 62. 

1 Clementini Alexandrini Opera, Graece et Latine, Lugduni Ba- 
tavorum. 1616. Stromatum, Lib. v., p. 405. 

2 Ibid, Admonitio ad Grentes, pp. 7, 8 ; and Stromatum, Lib. vi., 
pp. 456, 457. 



124 MEN OF THAT AGE CONVINCED. 

day when the simple facts of the gospel of Christ were 
fast throwing into shade all the venerable forms of 
Egyptian as well as Grecian science and philosophy, 
and were winning away the most gifted youth from the 
religion of their fathers, the Christian scholar boldly 
appeals to the nations to confess that entirely unlike to 
all human wisdom are the established facts of the 
Scriptures of revelation ; and that the inspiration which 
gave the Old and New Testaments is not to be com- 
pared with that of the Egyptian prophet, and of the 
Greek Pythoness. 1 Such a man, and such men, Charles, 
could appreciate what we are so indistinctly impressed 
with. In the very age when, in the same land where 
knowledge of the powers in human nature had reached a 
degree of culture such as it never since has surpassed, 
the writers of these Sacred Scriptures were proved, before 
the learned as well as the ignorant, to be gifted with an 
entirely distinct, a peculiar, a supernatural power. 

Surely, then, our faith rests on a rock " higher than 
we," on " the Rock of Ages ; " for the men of all on 
earth most able and most anxious to assert the contrary 
were forced to confess, " Their rock is not as our rock." 
When the wise men of ancient Egypt and Assyria, who 
witnessed them, testify to the supernatural power of 
Moses, Daniel, and the other prophets, it would be doing 
the greatest violence to my mental nature to force it 
into disbelief. I will not do it ; but I will try to cher- 
ish such a spirit of love for the truth, whatever it may 

1 Cleinentini Alexandrini Opera, Admonitio ad Gentes, pp. 7, 8; 
and Stromatum, Lib. i., p. 245. 



" THEIR ROCK NOT AS OURS." 125 

be, that when I read the Old Testament, attested through 
century after century to be a revelation from God, I 
shall not rashly adjudge as human that which the 
greatest minds of earth have known to be divins. 



£*thr <0lmittl|. 

THE WONDERS OP THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM AMONG THE 
GREEKS AND ROMANS, COMPARED WITH AND CON- 
FIRMING THE MIRACLES AND INSPIRATION 
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



" If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them 
out ? " " The evil spirit said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are 
ye ? " " And many that believed came and confessed, and showed their 
deeds. Many of them also that used curious arts brought their books 
together and burned them."— Luke 11 : 19 ; Acts 19 : 15, 18, 19. 

" If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not ; but if I do, believe 
the works." " No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom 
the Son shall reveal him." " What man knoweth the things of a man, save 
the spirit of man which is in him ? Even so knoweth no man the things of 
God but the Spirit of God. But God hath revealed them unto us by his 
Spirit." —John 10 : 37, 38 j Matt. 11 : 27 ; 1 Cor. 2 : 10, 11. 



Christian School in Egypt. — Greek Youth won. — Supernatural 
Revelation needed. — Greek and Roman View. — " Desire of 
all Nations." — Revelation not from Reason. — Not from the 
Spiritual Medium. — Jewish Art in Christ's Day. — Jewish 
Views of Christ's Miracles. — Mysterious Arts of Paul's Day. — 
Compared with Christ's Miracles. — Compared with Paul's Mira- 
cles. — Evil Spirits. — Possessions only in Christ's Day. — Good 
Angels. — No Revelation from them. — Miracles prove Inspira- 
tion. — The Ancients convinced. — All Ages convinced. 

My Dear Charles: 

One day about one hundred years after the birth of 
Jesus Christ, a young man was walking alone, in deep 
thought, along tho sandy beach near Alexandria, in 



GREEK YOUTH WON. 127 

Egypt. Deeply read in the philosophy of his time, he 
had passed through the various Grecian schools of 
the Stoics, of Aristotle and of Plato. In none of them 
all had he found anything to satisfy a soul seeking 
truth. In a distant land he had heard of the famed 
Christian school of Alexandria, which was taking pre- 
cedence of all the time-honored colleges of Egypt, and 
drawing the best youth from all the attractions of the 
Museum and the Libraries of the Ptolemies. Voyaging 
thither, and landing in the literary emporium of that 
day, the young man for a time kept aloof from the 
school he had sought, not making himself known, but 
forming an outside judgment ere he should commit him- 
self. It was at this juncture he was rambling, lonely, 
unknown and pensive, on the sea-shore. An old man, 
also walking there, passed him, drew near and saluted 
him. Soon they were in close and earnest converse ; 
and, as they went over together the grand features of 
the philosophies of their day, one could see that they 
were of kindred spirit and of like experience, and that 
souls made for communion were met. These themes 
exhausted, and their mutual difficulties and dissatisfac- 
tion fully exchanged, the old man, with a kindling eye 
and in glowing eloquence, began to speak of another 
theme, — of the " truth as it is in Jesus." The new doc- 
trine chained the young man's ear, won his heart, and 
made him a disciple ; and, after a life of masterly liter- 
ary toil, and of devoted Christian labor, he penned one 
of the most manly appeals which ever reached the eye 
of a Roman emperor or of the world, proving the supe- 



128 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION HEEDED. 

riority of the Christian to every other religious system, 
and Justin the Martyr sealed his testimony with his 
life. Charles, we live in an age when men reason for 
themselves, and everything is questioned and discussed. 
But nothing can exceed the folly of supposing that we 
have got beyond generations before us ; that we have 
examined more thoroughly, reasoned more profoundly, 
or can find eternal sure truth anywhere else than the 
Grecian and Roman world found and embraced it. 
The New Testament Scriptures are alone the eternal 
truth of God, revealed for our guidance. 

Turning, then, to the records of the New Testament, 
let us seek what it was that convinced Grecian and 
Roman scholars, familiar with the Egyptian mysteries. 
And, while we trace out its allusions to the wondrous 
manifestations of the spiritual medium, remember we 
that they were penned in the Ciceronian age of Grecian 
wisdom and of Roman learning, and that they were 
published to the world in the day when the largest expe- 
rience of those mysteries had been gathered from the 
gleanings of every age and land, and when the matured 
philosophy of their development had been most carefully 
sought out. We may then be prepared to appreciate, 
in the contrast, the really supernatural in the miraculous 
facts here recorded, and in the divine inspiration by 
which the spiritual truths here embodied were revealed. 

Nothing is more manifest than this, that all positive 
knowledge of the spiritual world, of God and of our 
future existence, of the preparation we need for that 
existence and of the means of securing that preparation, 



GREEK AND ROMAN VIEW, 129 

— all this knowledge must be gained, if gained at all, 
from sources outside of ourselves, from supernatural 
revelations. All our personal sources of knowledge are 
the observation of material things by the senses, and 
the intuitions or deductions of our reason as to spiritual 
truth ; and while our observation cannot reach beyond 
our present existence, our reason can only suggest prin- 
ciples ; it can apprehend no positive fact as to our future 
spiritual condition. Of this men without the Bible, 
such as Cicero and Plato, 1 have been as thoroughly con- 
vinced as we can be. 

Moreover, such a revelation we need ; it is not to us a 
matter of no importance whether we have it or not. Our 
spirits are bound to another world ; and for that world 
they are not prepared. For, just as truly as our bodily 
frames are disordered, and no human art or power can 
restore them so that this disorder shall not increase and 
end in utter decay, so our spirits are disordered, unfitted 
to mingle happily even with our own fellow-men, and 
much less with pure angels and a holy God. Of this, 
too, the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome 2 
spoke as clearly as did Paul the apostle of Christ ; feel- 
ing it as really, if not as deeply, as does he who believes 
in the Bible picture. They looked, therefore, for a 
supernatural revelation from the Creator and Father of 
our spirits. 3 

1 See Lectures on Christian Theology, by GL C. Knapp, D.D., 
translated from the German by Leonard Woods, Jun., D.D. Art. 
I., sect. 9 ; citations from ancients. 

2 Knapp's Theology, Art. ix., sect. 74 ; citations. 

3 Virgil's Pollio, Eclog. iv. ; Knapp's Theology, Art. x., sect. 89. 



130 " DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS." 

How men have longed for, and how they have in all 
ages sought such revelations, we have seen. As Plato 
said, the magic of Zoroaster, of Socrates, and of other 
seekers of truth, was nothing else than a means of 
knowing God. 1 But the oracles at length ceased to be 
trusted, and ceased to respond ; and it was as Plutarch 
said, because they were abused for trifling purposes, and 
perverted from their higher end. As Milton, in his 
rare study of the ancients, truthfully has pictured in his 
sublime " Christmas Hymn," on the night when Christ 
was born the Lybian oracle of Ammon, the Egyptian 
prophet, the Syrian deities, the shrines of Greece and 
the genius of Rome, had all alike ceased to give 
responses : 

•* The oracles are dumb; 
No voice or hideous hum 
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No nightly trance or breathed spell 
Inspires the pale-eyed priests from the prophetic cell." 

But now one from the other world was sent to give 
to men sure knowledge of God and of the spirit world. 
The necessity of human nature, perceived and spoken of 
by a Hebrew writer as early as the days of Zoroaster, 2 

i See Let. Sixth, p. 61. 

2 Haggai 2:7. The age of Zoroaster is generally fixed between 
589 and 519 B. C. Haggai prophesied in the reign of Darius 
Hystaspis, which began 521 B. C. The two men lived in the 
same land, as well as in the same age. 



REVELATION NOT FROM REASON. 131 

whom Pliny called the originator of magic, was now to 
be met. " The Desire of all Nations " came ; and as 
Columbus, on his return from a New World, could alone 
give sure knowledge as to what before had been conjec- 
tured, so He who alone " came down from heaven " 
could " bear witness to the truth." He lived and 
taught ; he died, arose, and ascended to heaven, leaving 
behind men empowered to write out his revelation for 
the world. 

Opening these their records, thus divinely given, we 
see confirmed what before had been impressed on the 
conviction of men. Observation and consciousness 
never can give positive knowledge of spiritual truth. 
He who made the world was in the world ; but the 
world knew him not. No man hath seen God at any 
time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and he 
hath declared him. 1 By observation, the Greek, from 
the creation, from the things made, perceived God's 
eternal power and personal deity; and reason, con- 
science, taught him in principle the law of God, his dis- 
obedience to it, and his just condemnation. 2 But, the 
world by wisdom, in fact, knew not God, in his real 
character, which was seen in Christ crucified; they 
knew not the means he had provided for the spirit's 
ransom and renovation, through the mediation of his 
Son ; a fact that could not be made known, except by 

1 John 1 - 1—18. 

2 Rom. 1 20, 32, and 2 : 14, 15. 



132 NOT FROM THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM. 

the hearing of the ear, through the voice or pen of a 
herald. 1 

Moreover, not through any mysterious development 
of the spiritual medium were revelations to be obtained. 
The plain, practical New Testament writers fail not to 
allude to the wonderful manifestations seen in their 
day, and to the popular impression in reference to them, 
not shunning to bring them into comparison with the 
miracles of Christ and their own inspiration. 

Jesus one day alluded to the mysterious arts by 
which Jewish exorcists cast out devils. Josephus 2 thus 
describes a scene of that day, of which he was a per- 
sonal eye-witness. Speaking of Solomon, he says, 
" God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels 
demons, which is a science useful and sanative to man. 
He composed such incantations, also, by which distem- 
pers are alleviated. And he left behind him the man- 
ner of using such exorcisms, by which they drive away 
demons, so that they never return ; and this method of 
cure is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a 
certain man of my own country, whose name was Ele- 
azar, releasing people that were demoniacal, in presence 
of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the 
whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the 
cure was this : he put a ring that had a root of the 
sort spoken of by Solomon to the nostrils of the demo- 
niac, after which he drew out the demon through his 

1 1 Cor. 1 : 21, 24; 2 : 8, 10; and Rom. 10 : 14. 

2 Josephus' Antiquities, Book viii., chap, n., sect. 5. 



JEWISH ART IN CHRIST'S DAY. 133 

nostrils ; and when the man fell down immediately, he 
adjured him to return into him no more, making still 
mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations he 
composed. And when Eleazar would persuade and 
demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, 
he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water J and 
commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to 
overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that 
he had left the man ; and when this was done the skill 
and wisdom of Solomon was shown very manifestly." 
Here the facts, the relief of the sufferer, and the 
moving of the metallic basin, are the same as seen in all 
ages, and in all lands from India to our shores. 1 The 
artificial means, the use of the metallic ring, of the 
exhilarating or stupefying drug, and of the mesmeric 
passes to bring the disease from the head, are the same 
with those seen in the Iioman and Grecian writers, on 
the ancient monuments of Egypt, and in the practice of 
modern India. 2 The reference of the cure to an art dig- 
nified with the authority of Solomon shows that there 
was a science behind ; and the reference of the disease to 
demoniacal agency shows the popular belief, behind 
which there was also a scientific truth. Now, with 
such scenes, Matthew, a resident in Palestine, and 
Luke, an intelligent physician, inquiring as tc the facts 
in Christ's history, knew their readers were familiar ; 
and they allude to them to confirm by the contrast 
the really supernatural in Christ's miracles. With an 

i See Let. Tenth, p. 98. 2 i^d, pp . 107—109. 

12 



134 MYSTERIOUS ARTS OF PAUL'S DAY. 

equal frankness and confidence, the different opinions 
entertained by those who witnessed them, as to Christ's 
wonderful works, are stated. When he casts out de- 
mons, some say "he does it by Beelzebub;" and when 
the voice from heaven addresses him, the men of im- 
pressible nervous organism say, " An angel spake to 
him ! " while the phlegmatic hearers sneeringly respond, 
" It only thundered." l 

In the slightly later times of the apostles of Christ, 
the same intelligent notice of the mysterious manifesta- 
tions of that day is taken. The educated and candid 
Luke, as a physician specially qualified to judge, always 
mentions incidents of this kind. Simon, the sorcerer, 
for a long time had perfectly fascinated the people of 
Samaria by his arts ; and they truly believed him to 
be the " great power of God." 2 The damsel of Philippi 
truly possessed the spirit of a Delphic " Pythoness," and 
could " divine." With respectful mention the " curious 
arts," and the " books " 3 treating on those arts, are 
alluded to. Without fear that it shall detract from 
Paul's real inspiration, Luke records the remark of the 
Pharisees, indicating their opinion about the apostle, 
" If a spirit or an angel has spoken to him, let us not 
fight against God." 4 

Thus noticing these sources through which super- 
natural knowledge was sought, the New Testament 
writers show the total unlikeness, the entire superiority, 

i Matt. 12 : 24; John 12 : 29. 2 Acts 8 : 9, 10. 

3 Acts 19 : 19. 4 Acts 23 : 9. 



135 



of the testimonials they brought. The Jewish exorcist, 
like the ancient and modern practitioners of like art in 
every land and age, to our time, may relieve certain 
affections of the body, by a peculiar power exerted over 
the nervous system of the sufferer. But Christ, by a 
touch, and often by a word at a distance, healed a 
hemorrhage of twelve years' continuance, a palsy of 
thirty-eight years' duration, and leprosy, the incurable 
disease ; while he also gave speech to the dumb, hearing 
to the deaf, sight to the blind, and " a right mind " to 
the lunatic. 1 The Hindoo devotee may throw himself 
into a trance, 2 from which, after many days, he may be 
revived. But Christ, casually entering after a day's 
journey a little village, met the corpse of a young man 
whom his friends were carrying to the grave; and, 
touching the bier, he restored him. 3 When in a distant 
region beyond the Jordan, he heard of the severe illness 
of a poor man living near Jerusalem ; and, waiting 
until he had expired and had lain in the grave till cor- 
ruption began, at a distance he first foretold that the 
dead should be raised, and then, coming and standing 
at the tomb amid a cavilling multitude, said " Come 
forth," and the dead came forth. 4 Finally, Jesus him- 
self, after hanging nailed to the cross three hours, after 
a soldier had thrust his spear into his vitals, so that not 

1 Matt. 9 : 20; John 5:5; Luke 5 : 12; compare 2 Kings 5 : 7; 
Luke 7 : 22, and 8 : 35. 

2 See Let. Ninth, p. 96. 3 Luke 7 : 11—15. 
4 John 11 : 1—44. 



136 COMPARED WITH CHRIST'S MIRACLES. 

only blood, but also the fluids of the vital organs, poured 
forth, and after lying in the grave until the third day, 
— Jesus himself, without another's aid, arose from the 
tomb. 1 

Equally striking is the truly supernatural in the 
apostles' miracles ; into contrast with which all, and 
more than, the arts we wonder at were brought, and 
were acknowledged to be but vain artifice. When 
Simon, the Magian, first saw the miracles of the apos- 
tles, he was overwhelmed with astonishment; while, 
moreover, his cupidity yet remaining, he sought to pur- 
chase the power as a new art. 2 From the divining 
damsel the simple word of Paul expelled the spirit 
which actuated her, and made her Christ's meek fol- 
lower. 3 Luke, looking on with a physician's practised 
eye, saw handkerchiefs and aprons brought from Paul 
effect the cure of diseases; and when the vagabond 
Jewish exorcists attempted to copy these healings, and 
the possessed man leaped madly upon the pretenders, 
such fear and conviction seized on the minds of the prac- 
tises of those arts, that " many confessed, and showed 
their deeds, and brought their books on the curious arts 
and burned them ; " magnifying thus the name of the 
Lord Jesus. 4 

Thus setting forth the deceptive, the mere art based 
on natural principles, and teaching that a resort to these 
was not to be trusted, but to be shunned, the New Tes- 

1 Matt. 27 : 45; John 19 : 34, 35, and John 10 : 18. 

2 Acts 8 : 13, 19. 3 Acts 16 : 18. 
4 Acts 19 : 11—19. 



EVIL SPIRITS. 137 

tament writers go yet further. They reveal most 
clearly and consistently the nature of evil and good 
spirits, the connection they have with us, and the 
source whence we should look for a revelation from 
God. 

As to evil spirits, we are assured of their existence ; 
what had been impressed on the belief of all mankind, 
and clearly taught in the Old Testament from the fall 
of Adam, being clearly exemplified. As an anomaly in 
the whole world's past and future history, just as much 
a feature of that age and of that little land as was 
the life of the Son of God himself, in Christ's day and 
in the country where he moved, actual bodily pos- 
sessions with demons occurred. They did not exist, 
apparently, in ages before. The Old Testament men- 
tions no instance ; the case of Saul being entirely dif- 
ferent from the New Testament possessions. 1 Josephus 
mentions them in no age but that immediately pre- 
ceding his own, except in the case of Saul, and in allu- 
sion to Solomon ; where, evidently, the peculiarity of his 
own day is transferred to former periods, or the Greek 
and Roman view of demons already considered is given. 2 
They existed not after Christ's day. Origen, in his 
commentary on Matt. 17th, writing less than two hun- 
dred years after Christ, remarks that the physicians of 

' 1 Sam. 16 : 14—23; 18 : 10—12. 

2 Josephus' Antiq., Book yi., chap, xi., sects. 2, 3, and Book 
viij., chap, ii., sect. 5. Also, Wars, Book vn., chap, vi., sect. 3; 
where the nature of demoniacal possession, and the plant used by 
the exorcist in removing it, are described. 

12* 



138 POSSESSIONS ONLY IN CHRIST'S DAY. 

his day did not believe there were such possessions. 1 
Moreover, though the gospels of Jesus are full of plain 
instances, and the word " demon " in Christ's life refers 
to evil spirits, yet mention of demoniacal possessions, even 
in the Acts of the Apostles, begins to fade away and to 
be lost, and the word is there applied oftener, in the 
Grecian sense, to demigods, and supposed revelations 
derived through them ; while, in the epistles, the only 
influence evil spirits are intimated to have over men, 
the only power which we are to regard them as pos- 
sessing, and against which we are to guard, is a spir- 
itual influence. 2 For a few years permitted to pos- 
sess the bodies of men, during the same years and in the 
same land where the Son of God was passing his human 
existence, permitted thus at that juncture to appear, 
that the power of man's Saviour might be manifest 
in overcoming the power of man's spiritual destroyer, 
the occasion for such possessions having passed by, 
they too, with other influences of a miraculous nature, 
passed away. The claim to the possession of such 
a power, sought for in themselves and others by 
crafty men, who would employ a diseased natural 
agency for gain, as seen in Simon and the damsel at 
Philippi, is always condemned by the apostles, and 
abandoned by those who became Christians. 3 James 
seems to classify, and that as mental philosophers in 
all ages have, the sources whence knowledge of the spir- 

1 Quoted in Knapp's Theology, § 65. 

2 See the references in Robinson's New Test. Greek Lexicon. 
Acts 8 : 20; 16 : 19, and 19 : 18, 19. 



GOOD ANGELS. 139 

itual world is sought ; mentioning that derived through 
the physical senses, that through the mental powers, 
and, lastly, that sought through the intermediate agency 
of the Grecian demon, or the spiritual medium ; and all 
these he condemns. 1 No one can read attentively the 
New Testament view of evil spirits, without being satis- 
fied that, while they plainly warn us against an evil 
influence on our moral and religious nature from such 
beings, they discard the idea of any power over man's 
physical and mental nature permanently exerted by 
them. 

Equally clearly are the existence and office of good 
angels set forth. Since our little world is thickly peo- 
pled, why should not other larger worlds be ? If our 
spirits live separate from the flesh in another world, 
why should not other spirits be there also ? Christ 
taught, in opposition to the Sadducees, that there are 
angels and spirits; and that in the resurrection hu- 
man souls are like the angels. 2 He taught that angels 
are cognizant of and interested in man and his affairs 
on earth ; joy spreading throughout their hosts over one 
sinner that repents. 3 The angels, moreover, Christ and 
his apostles taught, exert an influence on man, and on 
his behalf. The angels of one who serves God always 
behold the face of our Father in heaven ; they are min- 
istering spirits, sent forth to minister to them that are the 
heirs of salvation ; they come as welcoming messengers 
to meet the spirit parting from its abode on earth, and 

i James 3 : 15. 2 Luke 20 : 36—38. 3 Luke 16 : 1—10. 



140 ANGELS REVEAL NOTHING. 

they bear it to the company of others gathered from 
among men. 1 Here, however, ceases their influence 
over us ; it is purely a spiritual influence wrought 
on our spirits. Before Christ's coming angels did 
bring messages to man ; appearing to the patriarchs, 
mediating between God and man when the Law was 
given, and announcing Christ's birth before his minis- 
try. But, since Christ has come to teach men, and his 
perfected revelation has been given, angels are no more 
thus employed ; no revelation since Christ's coming have 
they brought. 2 Moreover, no spirit of man that has left 
this earth, however much that spirit may sympathize 
with the living, and by indirect influences aid them, — 
no soul will be allowed to return with a message from 
the spiritual world to his friends on earth. 3 

Finally, most clearly and satisfactorily to a sincere 
mind is the mode and the testimony of God's giving 
this his revelation presented. It seems to be this. As 
we have seen, we need a revelation to teach us the truth 
as to God, our future state, and the preparation meet for 
it. Such a revelation must come from a supernatural 
source, and only by supernatural testimonials can we 
know that it is from God. Of two kinds of power only, 
now, have we any knowledge ; power over matter, which 

1 Matt. 18 : 10; Heb. 1 : 14; Luke 16 : 22. 

2 Gen. 19: l s &c; Mat, 1 : 20; 2: 13; Luke 2: 10; Acts 7: 53; 
Gal 3 : 19 ; Heb 2:2. Also Heb. 2 : 3—5, where the " Christian 
dispensation " is said to be committed, after Christ, not to angels 3 
but to men. See Stuart, on the passage. 

3 Luke 16: 31. 



INSPIRATION PECULIAR IN NATURE. 141 

we can see and know, and power over spirit, which we 
cannot see, and of which we cannot directly be assured. 
Only by showing supernatural power over things seen, 
can any man convince another that he has supernatural 
power in reference to things unseen. Hence Christ 
wrought miracles. To prove his divine power, he did 
what no man can perform ; while, at the same time, to 
show his divine love to man, he made all his mighty 
works testify of that love. He healed incurable disease, 
" going about doing good," but not overturning moun- 
tains and casting them into the sea ; and this he did, 
not to excite wonder, not even primarily to relieve 
bodily suffering, but to prove that he had power to for- 
give sins and save the soul. 1 To his disciples he gave 
the same supernatural power in things seen, that they 
might be believed when they claimed supernatural 
knowledge of things unseen. 2 They wrote histories of 
their own and of Christ's miracles, whose truth no one 
m their age disputed, although their narratives were 
published when knowledge of the mysteries of spiritual 
power was most extensive, and the philosophy of that 
power was best understood. In those records they 
declare that they received directly from Christ and 
from God a supernatural knowledge of spiritual truth 
to communicate to man ; their seen power in healing 
the bodies of men being given simply to prove this 
correspondent and only really important power to guide 

i Matt. 9 : 6. 

2 John 14 : 12, 26 15 : 24—2" Acts 3 : 12. 



142 



and bless the spirits of men. 1 In describing he nature 
of this power, they speak of it as entirely unlike any 
possessed by men through the soul's own mysterious 
energies. It may be a fact that when one person has 
allowed her nervous energy to be controlled by another 
of stronger nerve, and when a second allows his thought 
to be echoed through that other, the secret knowledge 
of that second person may be reported. But this is noth- 
ing more nor less than my thought uttered by my own 
volition, through another to another. There is no power 
on earth by which another can become possessed of my 
secret thought, unless I willingly reveal it through my 
lips, or my pen ; or through the telegraphic rapping, 
writing or speaking, of the spiritual medium ; or through 
some other natural power, of which I am now uncon- 
scious. Hence, says an apostle, a man of large learning 
and wide experience in mysteries like those of our time, 
" What man knoweth the things of a man, save the 
spirit of man which is in him ?" No earthly human 
power can reach a single thought in another's spirit, 
unless he himself reveal it. " Even so," — must it not 
be thus ? — " the things of God knoweth no man, but 
the spirit of God." And thus, as Jesus said, " no man 
knoweth the Father, save the Son," who alone has been 
in heaven, and " has come down from heaven ; and he to 
whom the Son shall reveal him." So Paul argues, " If 
any man ever knows the deep things of God, God must 

1 Gal. 1 : 11, 12; 1 Cor. 14 : 37; 2 Cor. 2 : 17; 1 Thess. 2 : 13; 
4: 8; 2 Pet. 1 : 21; 1 John 4 : 6. 



143 



by his Spirit reveal them unto us;" communicating with 
us in woi'ds, as one man communicates his knowledge to 
another. l 

And now, Charles, I would that we could see and 
feel the force of these conclusions, as whole nations and 
men of the ablest minds have felt them. Forth went 
these testimonials of the apostles' power in their day, 
and the intellect of all Greece and Rome was enchained 
by them. The schools of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, 
where was gathered all the accumulated learning of 
Egypt, India, Greece and Rome combined, were de- 
serted by the young men, who thronged to the Chris- 
tian school there established in the century immediately 
after Christ. 2 The noblest genius of that age embraced 
the Christian faith, beholding the heaven- wide difference 
between it and all that philosophy had before taught ; so 
that in three centuries the Roman world bowed tc and 
acknowledged the Sacred Scriptures as the only divinely 
given revelation. Thus the able Tertullian, thoroughly 
acquainted with what he attempted, draws the contrast, 
in his heroic appeal to the Roman emperor ; referring 
to the Grecian notion of the demon, " one of whom Soc- 
rates said that he had from childhood attending him, 
and which he always consulted before he undertook any- 
thing of moment ;" declaring that by this demon (or spir 

i 1 Cor. 2 : 10—13 

2 Neander's Planting and Training of the Christian Church, 
Book ii., and Book in., chap. vi. ; also, Meander's History of the 
Church in the First Three Centuries, sect. 1st (A) ; especially 
his allusions to the Goe ;ae 



144 GROTIUS' THOROUGH STUDY. 

itual agent) " magicians perform all their amazing feats, 
calling up ghosts and departed spirits from the shades," 
by it " they are able to make stools and tables proph- 
esy," and by it they gain such mysterious knowledge that 
" Castor and Pollux at Rome announced the victory of 
Perseus, King of Macedon, the same day it was fought ;" 
and yet, allowing all this, he appeals, in that age when 
the facts were not forgotten but inscribed in public 
records now unknown, — he appeals to the truly super' 
natural in Christ's miracles, by the side of which all 
this was jugglery and artifice. 1 Ah, Charles, this sub- 
ject has been thoroughly canvassed, ages ago ; and men 
of larger minds than we have been convinced. Time 
would fail to picture single instances, in each succeeding 
age, of minds like that of Grotius ; who, after studying 
the philosophy and moral precepts of every age and 
land, sat down, after the work was finished, to compare 
the Sacred Scriptures with the Shasters and the Koran 
of the East, with the oracles of Greece, and with, the 
mysteries of spiritual power everywhere seen ; and then 
pointed out, for minds that should come after, the celes- 
tial superiority of the established word of God. Let us, 
Charles, bring our minds into contact with such leading 
spirits of our race, and we may catch, too, something of 
their intelligent faith. 

1 Tertullian's Apology, sects. 31 — 34, 47, 56. 



THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL DANGERS AND PENALTIES 
OF THE ABUSE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM. 



" Mysticism despairs of the regular processes of science." — Cousin. 
"Tune quaesieres, scire nefas, quern mihi, quern tibi 
Finem Dl dederint, Leuconoe j nee Babylonios 
Tentaris numeros. Ut melius, quidquid erit, pati ! " — Horace. 
[You should not seek to know, for it is wrong to inquire, what destiny 
forme, what for thee, the gods have appointed, "Leuconoe ; nor should you 
try to learn your fortune from Babylonian astrology. How much better, 
whatever may be our lot, to endure it !] 

" Young people would do wisely now to lay aside all their foolish books, 
their trifling ballads- and all romantic accounts of dreams and trances, 
senseless palmistry and groundless astrology. A little spark will kindle a 
great fire." — Turrell in Witchcraft Times. 

"Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being 
deceived." — Paul on erring Religious Teachers. 



What Use. — Experience shows. — Just Views prevailing. — Dan- 
gerous Experimenting. — Physical and Moral Danger. — Nerv- 
ous Epidemics. — Excitement on Spiritual Themes. — Cool Men 
cannot control it. — Avoid Exciting Causes. — Why Observers 
disagree. — Both Right, though differing. — Science a Growth 
of Ages. — Trained Men for the Risk. — Religious Experiment- 
ing. — Warning from the Past. — " Sure word of Prophecy." — 
No "Broken Cistern." 

My Dear Charles : 

Do you ask now, " Of what practical use is it for us 
to be brought thus to the conclusion that all these 
manifestations, supposed to be spiritual, are really nat- 
ural, the working of an agent intermediate between 
mind and matter ? " Look out for the next breeze that 
13 



146 JUST VIEWS PREVAILING. 

blows ; beware of the clouds gathering ! The trembling 
of Brattle, and the terrors that invested old Salem, may 
be near. We may see that experience will teach us the 
results are of great moment. 

It is dangerous to experiment with our own vital 
organism ; especially with our nervous energy. The 
whole history of similar developments in distant ages 
and nations seems to indicate that these manifestations 
are the working of our nervous organism. The whole 
process of their excitement, the character of the persons 
affected, the mode of inducing the influence by forming 
a circle of positives and negatives, the sitting in fixed 
abstraction, during which the generated nervous influence 
must accumulate in the system, as in an isolated Ley- 
den jar, the correspondence of the character of the re- 
sponses given to the inquiries made, the whole pro- 
cess of the excitement, confirms the conviction that 
the agent is the nervous principle. Most of all, 
the effect of this influence on the persons practising it 
is precisely that of other modes of nervous excitement. 
The poet, the orator, writing and speaking under a 
strong self-aroused enthusiasm, the raving Sibyl, the 
mesmerizer, the practiser of the spiritual rappings, all 
alike find a nervous exhaustion to be the result. 

Even since these letters to you were commenced, 
Charles, other minds, studying the mysteries which are 
now beginning to produce an alarming and Salem-like 
excitement in our community, have been tending to the 
same track of thought which we have been pursuing. 
There has just come from the press, for instance, a work 



DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTING. 147 

on the " Philosophy of Mysterious Agents." l Though 
differing in many vital points from this author, we may, 
with Cicero, rejoice when extreme theories meet in their 
practical conclusions. The justness of our main posi- 
tion, that a possible cause, shown by history to be con- 
formed to universal facts, is a practical proof that these 
manifestations are natural, — this position is confirmed 
from Herschel, who says that " the detection of a pos- 
sible cause must lead " either to " a real cause " or to 
u an abstract law of nature." 2 That these mysterious 
manifestations are " facts," that the experience of them 
depends in part on one's nervous " organism," and that 
the agent through which they are produced is " not 
electricity," but like it in some of its modes of action, 
are all intimated. 3 The cases cited, though all of the 
present day, are selected from those examined in France, 
Germany and elsewhere, by scientific men ; and they 
are all in harmony with the extended history which it 
has been our chief aim to trace. They are manifestly 
the undue, the dangerous excitement of our " nervous 
principle." 

Now, Charles, it is dangerous to experiment thus with 
our nervous principle. It was placed within us by the 
Creator to be the steady, constant, and mighty, but 

1 Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane ; or, 
the Dynamic Laws and Relations of Man, embracing the Natural 
Philosophy of Phenomena styled " Spiritual Manifestations." By 
E. C. Rogers. In five parts. No. I. Boston, 1852. 

2 Ibid, § 11. See Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 
by Sir J. F. W. Herschel, § 162. See also Letter Third. 

3 Ibid, §§ 54, 57, 63—65. 



148 DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTING. 

perfectly controllable mover of the body, which is now 
the mind's machinery. If I use it carefully, never 
overcharging the delicate organs in which it is generated, 
and by which it is conducted through my frame, all 
will last and keep time like clock-work. Let me allow 
myself to excite this influence till it overflows and escapes 
from my fingers, or other organs, in snaps, like electric- 
ity from the bands of a factory-wheel, or till it sets my 
arm to quivering in ungovernable spasms, and I shall 
find that I might as safely try the experiment of over- 
heating and over-straining a steam-boiler. Mark the 
invariable result of any undue mental excitement ; and 
especially of a persevering attendance on the circles now 
so common in our community. On first entering no 
impression is made upon us. Soon, however, our nerv- 
ous organism begins to feel the general impulse. There 
is a magnetic crawling and creeping sensation in the 
larger muscles, as of the arm ; till it increases as we 
become more impressed. As we daily come in to join 
the circle, the influence is not felt till we have waited 
for its generation ; and then, every time, more readily 
and more powerfully is it excited ; till raps echo for us, 
and the table moves at our will. And now the confirmed 
" medium" cannot rid himself of the influence when away 
from the circle. He is nervous. All his senses being 
unnaturally acute, he naturally and necessarily hears 
strange sounds, sees strange sights, and feels strange 
sensations. His mind being disturbed in its calm work- 
ing, he cannot fix his thoughts on his business, and he 
is all unsettled. His moral affections soon feel the influ* 



NERVOUS EPIDEMICS. 149 

encc. In the circle intent on spiritual manifestations, 
religion was all his theme ; but at home he speaks hast- 
ily, often harshly ; he feels conscious that the ties of his 
attachment to those who should be most dear to him are 
weakening ; and he finds his impressions of duty to his 
family and friends and neighbors growing blunted and 
dimmed. Finally, his religious nature feels the searing 
blight ; his faith is all afloat, rocking and tossing ; the 
anchor of his hope is broken off at the flukes ; and, 
driven starless and havenless by every wind of doctrine, 
even the white wings of his Christian charity, which 
once bore him to every chamber of suffering, are now 
riven as by a pestilential gale. Ere he is aware, he is 
lost. You would be surprised, Charles, to see how the 
most accurate students of the human mind, even the 
Arabian philosophers, have described the dangerous influ- 
ence arising from these causes : ranking it as a diseased 
mental bias, as much to be guarded against as a tendency 
to pulmonary consumption. 1 I would sooner experi- 
ment with my digestive organs, or my blood-vessels, than 
with my nervous principle ; for, the body's derangement 
is less fearful than that of the mind. I beg of you, 
Charles, think of this, if you have yielded to craving 
curiosity in following up these experiments. Be wise 
before it is too late. 

But, what is far more important, as much so as 
society is more important than an individual, remem- 
ber, Charles, that all these excitements are epidemics. 

1 See " Akhlak-i-Jalaly," transl. from the Persian of the Fakir 
Jany Muhammad Asaad, by W. F. Thompson. London. 

13* 



150 EXCITEMENT ON SPIRITUAL THEMES. 

Wide-spread excitements of a nervous nature go and 
come in waves, ebbing and flowing like the tide, swell- 
ing with every breeze, and rolling on till they dash and 
break in terrific ruin. Using the fearful figure of the pes- 
tilence, such men as Virgil and Tertullian describe the 
sweep of deranging excitements in their day. Mental dis- 
ease, like any contagious disease, prevails when the whole 
atmosphere and the general condition of the individual 
system is prepared for it. A whole community, like that 
of Paris in the days of Robespierre, may be infected with 
over mental excitement bordering on mental derange- 
ment. Especially is this true of that species of nervous 
excitement which leads to an oversight of the link 
uniting matter and spirit, and to a conviction that the 
natural is supernatural. As in the case of the Salem 
witchcraft, and a thousand similar scenes in other 
lands and ages, there is a reality in some of these mani- 
festations which startles observing and intelligent men, 
and awes the less experienced. Though thinking and 
learned men may themselves rest calm in the assurance 
that the mystery is the working of the God of nature, 
yet the difficulty they have in explaining their own im- 
pressions only excites the more those never accustomed 
to trace effects to their causes. Go read, Charles, Brat- 
tle's letter in the very midst of the rising tide of the 
Salem witchcraft excitement ; and see how a strong, 
clear mind may itself rise above and personally breast the 
rushing, careering sweep of popular excitement, while, 
nevertheless, the blood is chilled with trembling anxiety 
for those tossed at its mercy ; with whom reason and 



AVOID EXCITING CAUSES. 151 

persuasion have utterly lost their influence. Read 
again that letter, Charles ; for we may see its reenact- 
ment. Every breath may add to the tempest brewing ; 
every drop will add to the dashing billow. As noble 
Brattle, with a burning pen, quoted, " Behold how 
great a matter a little fire kindleth ! " It is a fearful 
responsibility to gratify one's own curiosity in following 
up these manifestations, at the hazard of awakening a 
general tendency of the popular mind which soon can- 
not be reasoned with or persuaded. 

Glance again, then, Charles, over the historic glean- 
ings we have gathered. Ever the same in their mys- 
terious character have the manifestations of the spiritual 
medium been ; tables moving, metals attracted, animals 
fascinated, nervous power controlling nervous power, 
secret thoughts wondrously telegraphed, sublime elo- 
quence pouring from the lip and pen ; all these mysteries 
are ever the same. Be sure there is a law where there is 
uniformity ; there is a science where facts may be clas- 
sified, though not explained. Mark, then, the danger. 
Observe the exciting causes, and avoid them. Beware 
of the advice of those absorbed in these manifestations, 
that you sit in mental abstraction reading books on 
these themes to arouse the excitement. Take the 
exhortation rather of good Mr. Turrell, in the Witchcraft 
times : " Young people now would do wisely to lay aside 
all their foolish books, their trifling ballads, and all 
romantic accounts of dreams and trances, senseless pal- 
mistry and groundless astrology." • If affected, Charles, 

1 Mass. Hist. Collections, vol. xx., p. 19. 



152 WHY OBSERVERS DISAGREE. 

by these influences, keep away from the circles, from 
the books, from everything that will excite it. 

But there is a more important view we ought to take. 
It is sinful, as well as perilous, to experiment with the 
established sources of knowledge granted us by our 
Creator. 

What injustice to ourselves, and wrong to others, we 
may be guilty of, by forgetting what are the sources of 
our knowledge ! They are of two kinds ; and he who 
has the one class predominating should not distrust or 
condemn him in whom the other sways the balance. 
We know what we see and others have seen, what the 
testimony of our senses and of the senses of others bears 
or has borne witness to. We know, also, what the uni- 
versal intellectual and moral intuitions of men have 
agreed in as true. Two men of not unequal mental 
power may have a different mental organism ; the one 
being more moved by things seen by the eye, the other by 
things pondered in the mind. Two men, equally shrewd 
in detecting deception, may go to the same exhibi- 
tion of " mesmerism," or of the " spiritual manifesta- 
tions." One may have such a nervous organism as to be 
easily affected ; and he feels, and sees, and knows, that 
there is a reality in them ; and no reasoning can con- 
vince him that what he knows to be true is false. The 
other is unsu ceptible himself of that nervous excite- 
ment; or he visits " the medium," perhaps, when nerv- 
ous exhaustion, or derangement, prevents the nervous 
development, or breaks its circle, as rain, thunder and 
earthquakes, dissipated it in Plutarch's day ; and he 



SCIENCE A GROWTH OF AGES. 153 

goes away thoroughly convinced that it is all delu- 
sion in the believer, if it be not deception in the prac- 
tiser. Both, from their point of view, are right ; both 
have truth on their side ; and each should remember 
what are the sources of knowledge to man, and should 
have charity for his fellow. We add that both are seen 
to harmonize when these manifestations are regarded as 
the working of the " nervous principle." 

How much knowledge should we not acquire, if we 
but trusted to the sources of knowledge we possess, and 
rightly used them ! We have learned in most matters 
of life to trust to the established medium of gaining 
needed information. The man of the strongest and most 
cultivated mind is not ashamed to acknowledge his de- 
pendence on his gardener, his watchmaker his phy- 
sician. They may be far inferior to him in intellect ; 
yet in their department they are skilled, and in their 
particular branches they are worthy to be his teachers. 
Now, are we qualified, by ourselves, to experiment, to 
gather and compare facts, and to decide that we have 
found a celestial science, in a field where the philoso- 
phers of every age and land have been mining, ai. d col- 
lecting, and arranging, and seeking to find the vein of 
truth which underlies and unites all that has been 
discovered? Surely what Cousin says of mysticism, 
u It despairs of the regular processes of science," is 
true of all who think to learn anything new from these 
novelties. Having for a few days witnessed a few facts, 
they jump at a conclusion, are sure they are looking 
on what the world before never saw, and rashly rush to 



154 RELIGIOUS EXPERIMENTING. 

try their skill in this fearful overtasking of their nerv- 
ous energy, as heedless as a child who sets a factory- 
wheel in motion, or explodes fire-crackers in a powder- 
mill. They who learn anything by such a course will be 
likely to learn too much ; to read too fearful a lesson. 
Why not leave, then, to men of science, the dangerous 
and arduous task, the wearing employ of making dis- 
coveries as to mysterious powers and influences ? Would 
it be safe for you or me, Charles, to suffer our curiosity 
to lead us to experimenting in chemistry, in manufac- 
turing explosive gases, or working a steam-engine ? 
And yet, the daily practising with these mysterious 
manifestations of the spiritual medium is more hazard- 
ous to my delicate frame-work than tampering with 
retorts and steam-pipes. Ah, leave we this experiment- 
ing to men of science, trained to the work ! Let a Pliny, 
an Agassiz, press forward first to view this agitated 
Vesuvius, ere we trust our young feet on the quiver- 
ing crust ! It may be that even they will peril them- 
selves in the attempt ; certainly we shall peril ourselves. 
Perhaps it may be wise in us if we apply these prin- 
ciples to our inquiries after religious truth. Suppose 
that I may witness mysterious spiritual developments, 
if I will seek them. My body was given to be used care- 
fully in toil for my own and my family's support ; and 
I have no right to experiment with and overstrain my 
muscles ; raising, for instance, to gratify my curiosity or 
my vanity, a heavy weight, and thus, perhaps, disabling 
myself for life. My mind was given me for the same 
and a higher end ; and I dare not experiment with it. 



WARNING FROM THE PAST. 155 

My religious nature was given me for the highest of all 
ends ; that I may know and serve and adore God 
forever, and that I may know and do my duty to my 
fellow-men. How can I, then, experiment with that 
nature ? 

Fearful has ever been the penalty of overlooking this 
responsibility, and violating this trust. When Paul 
wrote, " Beware, lest any man spoil you through phi- 
losophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, 
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ," 
he knew more than we know of the mysteries of spiritual 
manifestations, and of the delusion by which they would 
lead the mind astray. Bancroft quotes from the diary 
of Cotton Mather this entry, made after the witchcraft 
excitement, by which he was so carried away : — " Had 
temptations to Atheism, and to the abandonment of all 
religion as a delusion." No wonder ! It is just what 
an observer of the working of minds led away by any 
such excitement would expect to see follow ; since it 
always does follow. Minds that have come to rest on 
specious error as truth, as Paul says, " wax worse and 
worse, deceiving and being deceived." By allowing our 
intellect to get out of the path of knowledge in which 
our Creator has made us to walk, we may wander we 
know not whither ; and any form of deception may seem 
to be true. As I value my own spiritual welfare, and 
as I tremble at the responsibility of misleading others, I 
should beware how I tempt God, by experimenting with 
the means he has graciously given me for gaining reli- 
gious knowledge ; seeking it from sources he has con- 



156 "SURE WORD OF PROPHECY." 

demned and forbidden, and neglecting his sure word of 
prophecy. 

And now, Charles here is a book claiming to be 
God's revelation. Its earliest records, far from being 
penned in a rude age, before science and art and history 
were known, were written when all these flourished in 
some respects as they never have since. The man 
who penned its first five books had a human knowledge 
such as no philosopher of our day possesses. This surely 
cannot be an antiquated volume. Its second part, with 
all its narratives and letters, was written when Roman 
learning and literature was at the zenith of its perfec- 
tion. It came into comparison with all the combined 
wisdom of the world ; acquired a confidence and moral 
control above all the records of ages past ; and became in 
three centuries the law of God in the world's esteem. 
Unlike every other professed revelation, it has not been 
confined in the hands of interested men ; but all the 
people have it and study it for themselves. Unlike every 
other sacred book, the more it is known the more it is 
revered, and the nation where it is most read is the 
one most completely impressed with its divine authority. 
And, finally, (for where should we stop in such an enu- 
meration ?) the men most eminent in every branch of 
human knowledge, a Grotius in his, a Newton in his, a 
Champollion in his, a Silliman in his, a Lyell in his, 
have ever been most convinced that the Author of their 
science is the Author of this book : so celestial is the har- 
mony between them. 



iHpphmJEtorti £*tt*r. 



Twenty-seven Year's Review. — Three Views of Phenomena. — 
All Natural. — " Spiritual" View. — " Evil Spirits" Agents.— 
"Mechanical" View. — "Enthusiasm" of Science. — Its In- 
consistency. — "Mediate" View. — Progress in Sciences of 
Electricity and Magnetism. — Nervous Fluid a Kindred Agent. 
— Humboldt's Letter. — " New Force" of Arago. — The 
Count de Gasparin. — Facts Cited. — Failures Explained. — 
Source the Nervous Fluid. — Arago, Cuvier, and Others. — 
" Supernatural" from this Source, — Animal Magnetism. — 
Table-rappings. — Notice of Rogers and Others. — His View 
of "To Daimonion." — His own Theory. — Practical Lesson 
from Dr. Hare's Experience. 



Mr Dear Charles : 

Horace recommends a stern test to a young writer, 
— that he lay aside his work till the long process of 
his own maturing judgment has gone on for not less 
than eight successive years ; and allows that " in nono 
anno" he may dare to publish. It was in the twen- 
tieth year after their first suggestion that your 
friend's matured thoughts on the " Spiritual Me- 
dium" were penned for you, and now seven more 
years of reexamination have succeeded. A triple 

curb has been added to Horace's tight bit, and you 
14 



158 PROGRESS OF OPINION. 

certainly will not think it intrusive forwardness if 
your old friend comes ambling up again and asks an- 
other sitting. He wants now, too, to draw the veil 
from off his escutcheon, and let both its name and its 
motto be manifest. You will recognize " To Daimo- 
nion" though under another title, and "Traverse 
Oldfield" you can't mistake, though his name be 
changed. 

Seven years have witnessed some progress of opin- 
ion on our old topic, as on other things. The three 
classes of observers, of which we spoke before, 1 have 
all been multiplying their books on the subject 
Among the men devoted to physical science, and 
prompt, therefore, to see things in a material light, 
Faraday, 2 of European renown, and Page, 3 the 
justly honored American inventor of the electro-mo- 
tor, — not to add other names, — have referred a 
large portion of the phenomena to the credulity of 
ignorance and superstition, and have sought to ex- 
plain all that they allow to be fact on the supposition 
of the employ of mechanical, or, at least, physical 
agency, either designedly or unconsciously used by 
the operator or "medium." A still larger class, 

i See Letter 2d, p. 23. 

2 Prof. Faraday's letters on Table Moving, published in The 
London Times of June 30th, 1853, and the London Athenseum of 
July 2d, 1853. 

3 Psychomantia, Spirit Rapping, and Table Tipping exposed; 
by Prof. Charles G. Page, M. D., etc. New York, 1853. 



BELIEVERS IN FULL. 



159 



among whom are honored and revered names, such 
as Tallmadge and Edmunds, Ballou and Pierpont, 
have received all the phenomena, without qualifica- 
tion or exception, as real, and have attributed them 
to the efforts, more or less successful, of disembodied 
spirits in the spirit-world to reestablish communica- 
tion with friends yet in the flesh. A somewhat 
anomalous position, yet one classing him with this 
latter number, has been taken by Rev. Charles 
Beecher, — one of that gifted but somewhat erratic 
family of thinkers, — who has argued that the phe- 
nomena, which must be allowed as fact, are not only 
referable to supernatural agency, but that this agency 
is the power of evil spirits over the physical crea- 
tion. 1 Most surprising of all, the eminent chemist, 
Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, after first maintaining in 
a published letter dated July 27th, 1853, 2 the me- 
chanical view taken by Faraday, suddenly became 
convinced that there were facts which could not be 
explained on this theory ; and passing to the opposite 
extreme of unlimited credence and of belief in su- 
pernatural agency, he lived and died a " Spiritualist." 
Meanwhile, most able advocates of the mediate the- 
ory, which maintains the facts, but refers them to a 
sufficient though yet uninvestigated cause connected 



1 A Review of "Spiritual Manifestations; " by Rev. Charles 
Beecher. New York, 1853. 

2 Prof. Hare's Letter on the " Influence of Electricity in Table 
Tipping." 



160 FACTS ADMITTED. 

with our nervous organism, have been called forth, 
who, either in private avowals or in published discus- 
sions, have taken substantially the view maintained 
in these letters. It seems a fitting supplement, 
Charles, to our former "Traverse" of " Oldfields," 
to glance at the published sentiments of these classes 
of thinkers, and see how the facts in " Spiritualism" 
as well as their source have been " tested." 

It is important, at the outset, to observe that each 
of these classes profess to find what in truth must be 
styled a natural cause for these phenomena. They 
maintain that the same facts have been witnessed in 
all nations and ages ; and, of course, whatever is uni- 
versal and uniform belongs to nature and is governed 
by established law. Whether the originating cause be 
an excited imagination deceived by mechanical trick- 
ery, or a real spiritual agency above that of our phys- 
ical life, or, again, the action of our nervous organ- 
ism, the effects flowing from the cause are uniform, — 
therefore they are according to a law, and therefore 
are, strickly speaking, natural. It is a step towards a 
right and an impartial judgment to have reached to- 
gether this common ground, — that there are facts 
in these phenomena, and there is in them a historical 
uniformity. 

Standing, then, at this common point of view, it is 
just to give the courtesy of the first presentation, and 
the advantage of the first impression, to those most 
interested in these phenomena, because they are 



DISEMBODIED SPIRITS. 



161 



referred by them to the higher source. By common 
consent, this class are styled "Spiritualists." Not 
that these specially above others are believers in the 
spiritual as distinct from the material. On the con- 
trary, the class is generally made up of those who, 
from their previous habits of thought and feeling, and 
from their pursuits in life, have been specially forget- 
ful and ignorant of the spiritual, and who, having 
suddenly been forced out of their material slumber, 
and startled into a dreamy conviction of spiritual 
realities, have become absorbed for a time with their 
new, half-waking glimpses of the real spiritual, and 
have confounded them with imaginings that are un- 
real; and from this temporary fascination and ahan- 
don, have seemed to be more spiritual in their first 
crude dreams, than sober thinkers who have always 
believed in, and have thoroughly studied, spiritual 
truth. These so-called " Spiritualists" have believed 
that the two classes of acknowledged facts, — the mov- 
ing of material objects, as tables, etc., and the report- 
ing of intellectual knowledge, thought, and impression 
from the mind of one, through the rap, the speech, or 
the pen of another, — these are the work of spirits 
not now in the body. This view, of course, takes for 
granted that disembodied spirits have the power to 
act upon material things, and to employ for their pur- 
poses the bodies, which are the habitations and instru- 
ments made for the spirits of men now in the flesh ; 
against which supposition there are three classes of 
14* 



162 NO INVOLUNTARY CONTROL. 

valid objections, drawn from reason, from experience, 
and from the inspired word of God. Reason assures 
us instinctively of the reality of our separate mate- 
rial and spiritual existence, which constitutes "per- 
sonal identity;" that every human being has an 
existence independent of every other being, with a 
will, intelligence, and affections entirely his own ; 
and with an organized body, made to be controlled by 
his volition alone, and to be the instrument of his 
intelligence alone; an axiom of whose truth no 
amount of either understood reason or explained 
mystery can force us into a doubt. Experience, again, 
multiplying to any extent observed confirmations of 
the truth thus taught by reason, finds everywhere 
that this is the rule to which no exception is ever met ; 
for men always are seen to have spiritual control 
over their own bodies, not over those of other men ; 
and each man is always held responsible for his indi- 
vidual acts as emanating from his own will, — every 
pretext that he is not the controller of his own facul- 
ties being discarded as a fallacy. The revealed 
word of God, also, plainly teaches so fully the inde- 
pendence of each individual mind, that not even the 
Divine Spirit itself controls a human spirit but in 
accordance with its personal agency and responsibil- 
ity ; while in opposition to the idea of any involun- 
tary control from other created spirits, the Scriptures 
declare that for " every word" uttered by the lip, and 
for " all the deeds" done in the body, the individual 



AGENCY OF EVIL SPIRITS. 163 

tenant of that body, the personal actor in it, is alone 
responsible, and as responsible " must give account to 
God;" a requirement which could not be thus posi- 
tive, and without exception, were the lips and hands 
of any mortal so controlled by another spirit that 
their movement should cease to be that mortal's act. 
Certainly, we should be on our guard in allowing an 
exception, when the manifestations claiming to be 
supernatural are of such trivial importance, stimulat- 
ing only an idle curiosity, and promising no material 
or spiritual benefit to man. 

A real, yet hardly consistent, coincidence with 
what is called the " Spiritual " theory, is presented in 
the reference of these phenomena to the power of 
"evil spirits." Its author has "To Daimonion" 
before him ; he argues against its conclusion that 
power over the material creation is not committed to 
Satan ; and contends that the source of the facts in 
Spiritualism is not " a-pneumatic," or derived from 
physical nature, but "pneumatic," — i. e. 9 the action 
of spiritual agency. Like Cotton Mather, he con- 
tends that the " Prince of the power of the air" is a 
literal title of the Evil Spirit, and that he does 
directly act through physical causes to produce evil ; 
and he thinks that Josephus, Jamblicus, and the 
mediaeval writers, accord with this view. Without 
directly asserting it, he leaves the impression that he 
attributes to "To Daimonion" the endorsement of 
the mediaeval view of the spiritual medium, whicU, 



164 IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS. 

supposed an ether pervading the universe, through 
which waves of spiritual influence are propagated, — 
as sound through the air, and light, perhaps, through 
a more subtle fluid, — so that spirits most distant can 
exert an influence, and produce impressions on each 
other. The distinction, however, is manifest between 
a power to interfere with and derange the action of 
the laws of physical nature supposed to be allowed 
to the spirit of evil, while the Creator himself exerts 
no such erratic power, and a power to produce spirit- 
ual impressions by a moral influence on the mind of 
man, as God himself exerts such an influence. The 
latter principle is scriptural, the former is not. 
Equally distinct is the idea of the action of the ner- 
vous fluid, like to that of electricity, in accumulating 
until it becomes an attractive power, and again flow- 
ing off over connected conductors, and bearing my 
thought, as on a telegraph wire, to be rapped out at a 
distant point from the idea of a pervading fluid, 
through which, from a distance, waves of spiritual 
influence are propagated. The former idea is philo- 
sophical ; the latter, to say the least, is speculative. 
The example of Cotton Mather should be a living 
monitor, warning us that his position on this question 
is not only untenable, but dangerous to him who 
seeks to maintain it. 

The next class demanding a hearing are those 
holding the opposite extreme, and taking the lowest 
view of these phenomena and their causes. They 



MECHANICAL OK IMAGINARY. 165 

are generally men devoted to purely physical science, 
who ridicule the supposed facts as in part mechanical 
trickery, and to a great extent the suggestion of an 
excited imagination in an unscientific mind. Two 
facts, most palpable to educated men that move much 
in society, are hidden from the view of scientific 
students who live in the cloister. Ridicule — as the 
Epicureans at Athens, and the witchcraft satirizers at 
Salem found — ridicule deepens conviction when the 
senses bear witness to a mystery, and the "wise 
men," instead of interpreting the handwriting on the 
wall, jest at the fears of ignorance. Again, men of 
physical science, from the seclusion natural to their 
pursuits, appreciate less than men of any other class 
of learning the fact of their unfitness to judge of 
matters out of their line. They are ready to combat 
either the psychologist, the metaphysician, the moral- 
ist, or the theologian, as equals, if not superiors, in 
his special domain ; while they know that none but a 
man trained to it can think of forming a judgment, 
or uttering an opinion, in their department. If, how- 
ever, there is an esprit du corps among men of sci- 
ence, there is certainly self-respect among those 
classed by the man of physical science under the 
lower ranks as " learned divines," and " other edu- 
cated men." 

The truth and importance of these suggestions is 
specially illustrated in the work of the truly able 
Prof. Page, just alluded to. He seems more of an 



166 niOF. page's theory. 

enthusiast than the wildest enthusiast whom he con- 
demns ; declaring, " With all reverence we say it, we 
feel a sort of inspiration upon the laws of reaction, 
gravity, and friction, based upon the experience of 
every moment of remembered life, that compels us 
to reject peremptorily the testimony of our best 
friends, of the most distinguished and credible per- 
sons, or of the most exalted intellects, when they tell 
us that by the mere superposition of hands, or by the 
effort of the will, a table moves off by itself from the 
floor, without visible agency." 1 Science is nothing 
but a classification of facts observed ; and how can 
any new fact ever be attested, if human testimony is 
to be set aside in the manner thus indicated ? This 
over-confidence in the completeness of science as 
now established, leads to a partial observation and a 
hasty generalization most opposed to the method of 
the electro-magnetician's own science. Originating 
himself the experiment afterward reported as Fara- 
day's, Prof. Page placed cards under the fingers of 
the table-movers. Perceiving that when the table 
moved, the fingers of the operators anticipated its 
movement, the cards slipping forwards as their hands 
went faster than the table, he drew the inference that 
it was by the mechanical pressure alone of their 
hands that the table was moved. 2 Suppose that some 
one should place a card between his magnet and the 
iron bar to be drawn by it, and when the magnet 

l Psychomantia, p. 79. 2 Psychomantia, p. 88. 



ITS DEFECTS. 167 

moved faster than the iron as he drew it, and the 
card, therefore, slipped forward — suppose the objec- 
tor should insist that it was only a mechanical pressure 
which drew the iron after the magnet? In this connec- 
tion, again, Prof. Page says that he has " never seen" 
the table move but when the operator's hand is in 
contact with it, and denies the possibility of such 
movement without such contact. Suppose a man who 
had only seen a few magnets of little power should 
hear Prof. Page speak of his powerful electro-mag- 
net, by which an iron bar of a thousand pounds 
weight is first drawn up into contact, and then hurled 
down from the magnet ; and that this man who had 
not seen it should declare that such a pretended power 
in the magnet is impossible ? A sailor, that has seen 
the needle dip in the Northern Ocean toward the 
magnetic pole of the earth, is believed in opposition 
to a whole Royal Society of savans who should de- 
clare such a thing impossible because they had not 
seen it. Passing, again, from the " table movings" to 
the "rappings," Prof. Page insists that if the Fox 
girls could make the raps at all without deception, 
they could make them at some distance from their 
persons. Suppose some one should demand that the 
electric snaps be made at a distance from the ma- 
chine? He demands that they be made through a 
thick cushion, on which they are to stand. Would 
he admit the same test in the transmission of elec- 
tricity ? His rule for intelligent observers who would 



168 ITS DEFECTS. 

judge " without bias" of these phenomena is : " Divest 
yourself of all idea of the supernatural, or any new 
fluid, or new law or property whatever, and, regard- 
ing the performance as a trick or an illusion, scruti- 
nize sharply every movement and circumstance in 
connection." This may be legitimate as a rule for 
the observer only ; and he could not but ask a similar 
scrutiny, if not a like incredulity, in observers of his 
electro-motor. But the very theory as to the " me- 
dium," or operator, is, that he or she, under intense 
nervous excitement, is over-charged with the nervous 
fluid ; and that this over-charge is the source of the 
phenomena. Of course he would not consent to lec- 
ture on electricity, unless he were allowed to turn 
the machine which was to generate the electric fluid. 
Prof. Page's natural enthusiasm as a man of science, 
also, blinds him to the fact, that simple-minded peo- 
ple, accustomed to take the testimony of one man as 
much as of another in matters of eyesight, are left 
more in mystery by the final result to which his 
investigations brought him, than they could be before 
opening his book. As to the cause of the raps which 
he heard, Prof. Page says: "It has been affirmed 
that a relative of these girls has made a public state- 
ment, under oath, that they produce the raps with 
their toes, in a peculiar manner acquired by long 
practice. The public papers tell us that electro-mag- 
netism has been employed to carry out this fraud. 
The snapping of the joints has been resorted to by 



THE NERVOUS FLUID. 169 

another. * * * " The Fox girls rapped upon neither 
of these plans. The sound was machine-like" 1 Of 
course, then, it is only necessary for some intimate 
and trustworthy friend to declare that he or she has 
examined the persons of the girls when rapping, and 
that "no machine" is used, and there remains the 
fact, attested by Prof. Page, that the raps are made, 
while all the physical causes that can be assigned are 
disproved. Is it to be supposed that such a result 
will satisfy public inquiry ? 

We turn, then, Charles, with an increased convic- 
tion, that as the cause is not spiritual, or supernat- 
ural (and as it is not physical, or mechanical), it 
must be found in the action of the nervous fluid; 
which in all ages and nations has exhibited its mys- 
terious influence, has followed its uniform law every- 
where, and has, by impartial thinkers, been viewed 
in substantially the same light. 

The most casual review of the last few years' 
researches in the departments of electricity and mag- 
netism, called forth as they have been by the prac- 
tical applications of these powers in telegraphing and 
as motors, surprises us with the conviction that much 
more might have been learned of this kindred power, 
the nervous fluid, had the French Academy, and 
other associations of scientific men, pursued its inves- 
tigation with a similar zest. Not only has the action 
of electricity and magnetism in telegraphing, daguer- 

i Psychomantia, p. 57. 

15 



170 ITS REALITY. 

reotyping, and propelling machinery, been a favorite 
subject of scientific research and discussion, but its 
relations to vegetable and animal life and growth 
have been pursued with interested study. One or 
two facts subsidiary in these investigations, as reported 
in the " Compte-Rendu," the organ of the French 
Academy of Science, have such a bearing on the 
kindred laws of the nervous fluid, that they demand 
a place here. As one of the facts established as to 
the reality of the relation of the nervous energy to 
its kindred forces, and the law of its action, the fol- 
lowing is the result of a communication on electro- 
physiology, addressed to the Academy by M. Ch. 
Matteuci: "Whatever may be the nature of the 
nervous force, of which we are ignorant, as of that 
of the other great agents of nature, it is a fact that 
this force propagates itself in the nerves, now from 
the brain to the extremities, now in the contrary 
direction." * As illustrative of a power residing in 
the nervous fluid, kindred to electricity and magnet- 
ism, the following is quoted from a letter of Hum- 
boldt to Arago : " M. du Bois is the skilful experi- 
menter who, first and alone, has succeeded in making 
the needle at rest deviate by the will of man ; that 

1 " Quelle que soit la nature de la force nerveuse, que nous 
ignorons, corarae celle des autres grandes agents de la nature, 
c'est un fait que cette force se propage dans les nerfs, tan tot du 
cerveau aux extremities, tantot en sens contraries. " — Compte 
Rendu, 1849, p. 568. 



ITS PHENOMENA. 171 

is to say, by the electric current which produces the 
muscular effect, the tension of our limbs. This 
deviation is effected at great distances, and ceases 
when at will the person does not hold his muscles in 
tension." l Here there is ample testimony that the 
nervous fluid, called by Humboldt the " electric cur- 
rent," which produces the tension of the muscles, is, 
even at great distances, the source of magnetic attrac- 
tions. 

New testimony is accumulating, that this same 
force has, in the unexpressed opinions of scientific 
men, been recognized as the cause of the phenomena 
of so-called Spiritualism. When, in 1848, Arago 
witnessed the attraction and repulsion of heavy 
bodies at the presence of Angelique Cottin, a ner- 
vous factory -girl, who having begun suddenly to ex- 
hibit this wonderful derangement, was carried up 
to Paris to appear before the Academy, that great 
philosopher remarked, when asked his opinion about 
it, "That is yet to be settled. It seems to have no 
identity with electricity ; and yet, when one touches 
her in the paroxysms, there is a shock like that given 
by the discharge of the Ley den jar. It seems to 

1 " M. du Bois est l'habile experimentateur, qui, le premier et 
le seul, a reussi a faire devier une aiguille a statique par la vo- 
lonte de rhomme; c'est a dire par le courant electrique que 
produit reflect musculaire, la tension de nos membres. Cette 
deviation s' opere a de grandes distances, et cesse des qu'a vo- 
lonteon ne tend le muscle." —Compte Rendu, 1849, p. 576. 



172 ARAGO'S TESTIMONY. 

have no identity with magnetism proper, for it has 
no reaction on the needle ; and yet the north pole of a 
magnet has a most powerful reaction on her, pro- 
ducing shocks and trembling. This is not effected 
through the influence of her imagination, as the mag- 
net has the same influence whether brought secretly 
near her, or otherwise. It seems a new force. At all 
events, whatever it be, time and research will deter- 
mine, with a sufficient number of cases. At present 
we are left to conjecture. One thing, however, seems 
to be certain ; the phenomena of this case show very 
plainly that, whatever the force is which acts so pow- 
erfully from the organism of this young girl, it does 
not act alone. It stands in mysterious relation to 
some mundane force which acts and reacts with it. 
This is witnessed in the reaction which external 
things have upon her person, often attracting her with 
great power. It is a curious inquiry, and may open 
to us new resources in the nature of man and of the 
world, of which we have little dreamed." x We shall 
find further testimony from Arago, quoted by another 
writer. 

Numerous able writers, meanwhile, have discussed 
the phenomena of so-called Spiritualism, and have 
maintained the view that they are produced by the 
action of our nervous organism. The work of Rog- 

1 Quoted by Rogers' " Philosophy of Mysterious Agents," 
p. 58. 



ROGERS' OPINION. 



173 



ers, just alluded to in our previous communications, 1 
has been completed; a work whose philosophy on 
this point may, in substance, be worthy of adoption, 
whatever may be thought of the theological system, 
with which it seems to be harmonized. Among the 
most voluminous and complete works on the subject, 
is a recent publication of Count Agenor de Gasparin, 2 
the noble, learned, and devotedly pious Editor of 
the "Archives du Christianisme," the leading Protes- 
tant organ of Paris. M. de Gasparin is a man of 
eminent scientific ability and note, as is witnessed by 
his contributions to different scientific journals of 
Geneva and Paris, both which cities share his resi- 
dence. 

He alludes in his introduction to the tide of oppo- 
sition even to the investigation of this subject, among 
the majority of men known as cultivators of science ; 
but referring to the frankness of the Alcestis of Euri- 
pides, he decides to act, not as his inclination, but as 
right demands, even if he lose by it his case. 3 He 
avows his belief in the reality of the phenomena, and, 
giving an extended narrative of facts elicited by him- 
self at a series of sittings extended through the 
months of September, October, November, and De- 



i See Letter 12th, p. 147. 

2 Des Tables Tournantes, du Sur naturel en General, et Des 
Esprits. Par Le Cte. Agenor de Gasparin, Paris, 1854. Two 
volumes, pages 564 and 579. 

3 Des Tables Tournantes, etc., vol i., pp. 6, 14. 

15* 



174 COUNT DE GASPARIN. 

cember, 1853, he philosophically accounts for the 
occasional failure, as for the failure of electrical 
experiments in an unfavorable atmosphere, in ac- 
cordance with the fact that the over-tasking of the 
nervous energies which leads to the phenomena, 
must often produce temporary exhaustion in the gen- 
eration of the nervous fluid. 1 With mingled wit 
and skill, he shows the fallacy of Faraday's experi- 
ments, already alluded to in this letter, and the 
conflicting opinions, destroying each other, of the 
French savans, Babinet and Seguin, the former 
of whom denies, while the latter admits, " the exist- 
ence of the fluid directed by our will ; " and he asks 
if it is not after all the pride of confessing their 
error, the old " Odi profanum vulgus," which is the 
chief difficulty of men of science in admitting the 
facts in so-called Spiritualism. 2 Recurring again to 
the frequent failures in table-moving, he quotes M. 
Husson's language, addressed to the French Academy 
of Medicine, on the failure of two successive mag- 
netic experiments attempted before them : " There 
is nothing more variable than magnetic effects ;" and, 
he adds, " What facts are there, we might demand, in 
the science of medicine, in therapeutics, in physiol- 
ogy, which are always fixed and immovable ? " He 
replies at length to the suggested fear that to admit 

1 Des Tables Tournantes, pp. 21-99. 

2 Ibid, pp. 99-120; U V existence du fluide dirige par notre vo- 
lonte." 



FACT AND IMAGINATION. 175 

the facts will give ground for superstition and cre- 
dence in false miracles. He shows the marked line 
between just confidence in undeniable facts and the 
perversions of imagination, by reference to Ammia- 
nus Marcellinus, the old Roman historian, who re- 
fers to " table" revelations the perfect counterpart of 
those now witnessed among us. The people of Rome 
were expecting that Theodorus would become the 
emperor ; and, of course, when the " tables were con- 
sulted they gave the letters of that name : whereas it 
proved that Theodosius became the emperor. 1 A 
more perfect confirmation of the principle that the 
tables but report the impression of the consulter 
could hardly be devised. He quotes also Tertullian's 
mention, referred to in " To Daimonion " in these 
words : " Mensae divinare consueverunt," Tables are 
accustomed to divine? He closes this portion of his 
volume with a series of letters published by him in 
1853, in different journals, called forth by the fact 
that numerous memorials had been addressed to the 
Academy, asking them to institute an examination of 
the facts ; to which M. Foucault had given the scorn- 
ful answer, " The Academy of Science had replied 

i See Rerum Gestarum, Lib. xxix. Valens, warned by the 
astrologers that one whose name began with Theod was to suc- 
ceed him, put to death his valet Theodorus. Consulting the 
" Tables," as now they are consulted, his own thought was re- 
vealed by the raps, as now is true. 

2 Tables Tournantes, vol. I., pp. 120-192. 



176 SUPERNATURAL IN GENERAL. 

with a disdainful silence to the communications 
which had been addressed to them on this subject." 1 

After this protracted presentation of the " facts " 
in Spiritualism, De Gasparin occupies the remainder 
of his first volume with the consideration of the 
" supernatural in general." 2 He recites the case of 
the celebrated "magicians" at Cairo, mentioned in 
these letters. 3 He quotes a case examined by Cha- 
millard, doctor of Sorbonne, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; in which the same result was reached as that 
reported by the French Academy's commission to 
report on Mesmer's experiments, which result was 
thus sententiously recorded: " Mulla ficta, pauca vera, 
a dsemone nulla ; " " Many things fictitious, a few 
true, from a demon none." He well argues in a 
chapter on the Scripture-teaching that a belief in a 
physical abode of future torment, and present physi- 
cal torture inflicted by demons, are alike unscriptural, 
and both inventions of a hierarchy that assumed to 
hold the key of heaven and hell. 4 

Coming to the consideration of the natural cause 
of these phenomena, he unhesitatingly ascribes them 
to the excess of nervous excitability. He unshrink- 
ingly applies the rule to his Christian brethren in 
America. Declaring his "respect pour le plupart 

i Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., pp. 197-222. 
2 Ibid. pp. 225-564. 3 See p. 337. 

4 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I. p. 495 ; also Letter 11th, 
p. 137. 



EXCESS OF NERVOUS EXCITABILITY. 177 

des pasteurs qui convoquent les camp meetings" he 
thinks the cases of the swooners who shout " Gloire ! 
gloire ! " come under the same " category" with the 
" mediums." He adds, with all sincerity of pious 
devotion : " I should not love my brethren of the 
United States, I should not render justice to their 
magnificent evangelic and missionary labors, to their 
orthodoxy, to their praiseworthy establishment of 
their churches, separate from the state, and distinct 
from the world, if I did not point out the scandal 
of certain awakenings (reveils) of theirs." He pro- 
ceeds to quote, as confirmatory of his view of the 
cause of the phenomena of Spiritualism, the state- 
ments of Herschel, Franklin, and Cuvier, as cited 
in " To Daimonion" ; and adds this striking avowal 
of Arago, as published in the " Annuaire" for 1853. 
Alluding to the report made by the commission, of 
which Franklin was one, appointed by the French 
Academy to examine Mesmer's experiments, and 
comparing them with the developments of our day, 
Arago says: "Effects, analogous or inverse, might 
evidently be occasioned by a fluid, subtle, invisible, 
imponderable ; by a sort of nervous fluid ; or of 
magnetic fluid, if this be preferred, which may cir- 
culate in our organs. Thus the commissioners were 
guarded against speaking of impossibility. Their the- 
sis was more modest. They contented themselves with 

1 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. i., p. 504, 



178 APOCRYPHAL SUPERNATURAL. 

saying that nothing demonstrated the existence of such 
a fluid." * The counter report of Jussieu, one of that 
commission, is also quoted, that "several facts, well 
verified, independent of imagination, and to him be- 
yond doubt, sufficed to make him admit the existence, 
or the possibility of a fluid, or agent, which is borne 
from man to his fellow . . . sometimes by simple 
approach from a distance." 2 He quotes, moreover, 
the passage from Cuvier cited in these letters, and 
adds a parallel statement of Laplace, in his " Doc- 
trine of Probabilities," applied to magnetic phenom- 
ena in his day. 3 

De Gasparin commences his second volume with a 
discussion of the " Apocryphal Supernatural," under 
four heads : first, " False Miracles ; " second, " False 
Sorcery ; " third, " Animal Magnetism ; " and fourth, 
u The Rapping Tables and Spirits." Under the 
second, he introduces a consideration of the famed 
" divining-rod ;" which, under one form, has been noted 
as the means of discovering well-springs. Under the 
third, he gives an extended history of the investiga- 

1 " Des effets analogues ou inverses pouvaient evidemment etre 
occasioned par un fluide subtil, invisible, imponderable, par une 
sorte de fluide nerveux, ou de fluide magnetique, si on le pre- 
fere, qui circulerait dans nos organes. Aussi ]es commissaires se 
garderent-ils de parler d ? impossibilite. Leur these etait plus 
modeste; ils se contentaient de dire que rien ne demontrait V 
existence d'un semblable fluide.' 7 

2 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., p. 509. 

3 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. i., p. 509. 



SPEAKING TABLES. 179 

tions and reports of the commissioners appointed by 
the French Academy, when Mesmer was experiment- 
ing in Paris ; of which number the American Frank- 
lin was one. He adds, also, the following reference 
of Arago to the facts, so long denied, that do exist in 
somnambulism, or clairvoyance. In the " Annuaire 
du Bureau des Longitudes," Arago says : " He who, 
outside of the pure mathematics, pronounces the word 
6 impossible/ lacks prudence. . . . Nothing, for exam- 
ple, in the marvels of somnambulism raises more of 
doubt, than an assertion very frequently re-produced, 
touching the faculty which certain persons possess in 
the state of fit, of deciphering a letter at a distance, 
with the foot, by the hands, with the stomach." l De 
Gasparin concludes, in reference to all these cases, 
that the unexplained cause of all that is real in 
these phenomena regarded as supernatural, is to be 
found in an undue and diseased action of the nervous 
organism. 

The " Speaking Tables and their Spirits " is the 
last subject he discusses. At the outset, he expresses 
the conviction, since the facts reported on both sides 
the Atlantic are so numerous and so undoubted, that 
there are but two inquiries which a philosophic mind 
can entertain : Are they natural ? or, Are they super- 
natural? The former is of course his view; and 
before proceeding to present his own theory, he turns 
for illustration and confirmation to other writers. He 

1 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., p. 309. 



180 THEORIES EXAMINED. 

briefly examines the theory of Rogers, in his " Phi- 
losophy of Mysterious Agents ; " and though agreeing 
with him in the conviction that there is a cause in 
nature for the phenomena referred to, he thinks the 
view of Mr. Rogers leads to materialism, to " a fluid 
which is God." Quoting from M. Cahagnet, a gen- 
uine apostle of the materialistic school, he ingeniously 
admits that Mr. Rogers is far from avowing in form 
this creed ; yet he thinks that, without intending it ? 
he does in effect endorse it. 1 A fuller notice is then 
given of a work by a French author, M. Morin, enti- 
tled " Comment F Esprit vient aux Tables," " How 
the Spirit comes to the Tables." 

The theory of "M. Oldfield," in "To Daimo- 
nion," 2 has then an extended notice ; when the author 
is prepared for his own theory. The author ex- 
presses his extreme gratification at the return "au 

1 u M. Rogers est bien eloigne de signer cette eflfray ante pro- 
fession de foi ; cependant il fait, sans le vouloir, acte formel de 
materialisme." — Des Tables Toumantes, vol. n., p. 364. 

2 The author introduces it thus : " Je citerai l'auteur d'un 
ecrit savant et remarquable qui a paru a Boston sous le titre 
de To Daimonion, or the Spiritual Medium, by Traverse Oldfield. 
.... Ceux, qui le liront, apprenderont beaucoup de choses ; ils 
y trouveront avec joie un retour, au vrai bon sens," etc. See Des 
Tables Tournantes, vol. n., p. 382. The author of To Daimonion, 
having learned that his old travelling acquaintance was preparing 
the work here examined, sent him these Letters. A most courte- 
ous and friendly autograph letter was soon received, stating his 
thanks for its reception, and his purpose to avail himself of its 
history in his forthcoming work. 



TO DAIMONION. 181 

vrai bon sens," which he here finds. He congrat- 
ulates himself on the fund of historical testimony it 
embodies, and he avails himself of it frequently in 
his volumes. His chief criticism relates to the lib- 
eral view given of the opinions of the ancients on 
this subject, not only of the classic authors of Greece 
and Rome, but of the Church Fathers. A European 
Protestant, constantly called to feel the humiliation, if 
not the oppression, coming from an overbearing hier- 
archy under which he must live, De Gasparin cannot 
fully enter into the truly catholic spirit of a land like 
ours, where all that is valuable in an ancient ritual, 
especially all that is true and worthy in the primitive 
history of the Christian Church, is appreciated ac- 
cording to its worth. With genuine courtesy, and the 
most fraternal spirit of charity, however, the noble au- 
thor closes his criticism, after going over at length the 
list of Greek and Latin authors cited, and hinting a 
fear that the liberality of M. Oldfield will make him 
fraternize in ancient sentiments of dangerous ten- 
dency, with these remarks : " Have I a claim to 
learn all this from the author of Daimonion? I 
should show a bad grace in doing it, for it is he who 
furnishes me the materials for such a judgment. It 
is probable that his real thought does not go so far 
as his words ; he wished to show only that antiquity 
had had some presentiment of the fluid action ; that 
under their theories it is always possible to find the 
fundamental fruits of the spiritual medium ; that, in 
16 



182 CONCLUSION OP GASPARIN. 

fine, in spite of their real superstitions, great think- 
ers have not ceased to hold a language which we may 
at this day easily render accordant with reason by 
changing three or four words in it." x 

The remainder of the volume is devoted to the 
exposition of his own theory, and the confirmation 
of his view as philosophic, by citations from history. 
His conclusion is substantially that of the French 
Commissioners' report on Mesmerism, that the re- 
ported phenomena of so-called " Spiritual Manifest- 
ations" are to be referred 'partly to errors of testi- 
mony, arising from the natural spirit of man to 
exaggerate the character and number of the facts; 
partly to the hallucination of an excited imagination, 
which suggests an exaggerated idea of the cause as 
supernatural ; and chiefly to the real " action of the 
nervous fluid" by which phenomena analogous to 
those in electricity and magnetism are wrought. 
His historical confirmations are mainly those of " To 
Daimonion." In the resume, or summing up of his 

1 " Ai je pretention d'apprendre tout cela de Pauteur du Daimo- 
nion 1 J'aurais mauvaise grace a le faire, car c'est lui qui me 
fournit ces renseignements. II est probable que sa pensee reelle 
ne va pas aussi loin que ses paroles ; il a voulu montrer seule- 
ment que V antiquite avait eu quelque presentiment de Paction 
fluidique ; que sous ses theories il est toujours de retrouver le traits 
fondamentaux du medium spirituel ; q'uen fin, en depit de ieurs 
superstitions reelles, les grands penseurs n'ont cesser de tenir 
une langage que Ton rendrait aisemant raisonable aujourd' hui 
en y changeant trois ou quatre mots." — p. 389. 



CONCLUSION OF GASPARIN. 183 

work, he thus writes : x " I regard now my task as 
done. It is not for me to trench upon a domain 
which is not mine. There was a moral work to be 
undertaken, and I have confined myself scrupulously 
to it. To reestablish a truth injured and misunder- 
stood, to follow out its experimental proof by facts 
(sa constation experimentale), to maintain the com- 
promised freedom of discussion, to combat supersti- 
tious tendencies retrograde and anti- Christian, this 
it is I would endeavor to accomplish. As to re- 
searches, properly called scientific, I leave them to 
whom they of right belong (a qui de droit). . . . My 
conclusions have been of a nature to destroy all super- 
stitious fables, modern as well as ancient, and to re- 
affirm, at the same time, the certitude of history, the 
certitude of science, the certitude of religion. Ar- 
rived at this point, I lay down the pen." 

And, Charles, here too we may lay down our pen, 
and think our task done ; with one already cited fact 
leaving its last impression on our minds. When the 
first twelve letters of " To Daimonion " had been for 
about a year before the public, one of the most eminent 



i The Count de Gasparin is of the old French nobility, a Prot- 
estant Christian in mind and heart, a Christian philanthropist 
whose personal appeals for American and other missionaries have 
been felt in the councils of even the Sublime Porte at Constan- 
tinople, as well as elsewhere in the Levant, and whose scholarship 
in the varied departments of Science, as well as Literature and 
the Humanities, is most remarkable. 



184 PROF. HARE. 

chemists of this, or of any land, prejudging, like 
others of his class, the scientific character of re- 
ported facts in the phenomena of " Spiritual Man- 
ifestations," so-called, and regarding them as delusion 
and trickery, published his opinion without examina- 
tion. Induced afterwards to examine what he had 
thus rashly prejudged, he was startled with the evi- 
dence of the verity of the phenomena. Conscious 
of his thorough knowledge of the science of mag- 
netism and electricity, these new phenomena, which 
were manifestly out of and beyond his department, 
were more impressive to the philosopher than to a 
less informed man. The mystery was more appall- 
ing, and the apparent cause more manifestly above 
the range of human and earthly agencies. From 
the most positive disbelief he passed naturally to the 
most positive and unhesitating belief in the facts of 
these phenomena. From attributing their reported 
existence to the lowest human origin, he passed, ac- 
cording to the natural law of human conviction, to the 
reference of them to the highest source, to a super- 
natural agency. When such a man as Prof. Hare, of 
Philadelphia, is thus philosophically led from one ex- 
treme to the other, we may not, Charles, be charged, 
after all our previous survey, with improper cre- 
dulity, if we believe the facts of Spiritualism to 
be attested. When such a mind, too, is forced, 
before scientific inquiry can be instituted, to take 
so exalted a view of the source of these attested 



CAUSE IN NATURE. 185 

facts, we cannot be charged with vain empiricism if, 
after all our survey of the opinions of philosophic 
men, we believe there is a "cause in nature" for 
these phenomena which is yet to be "tested" Read 
again, Charles, leisurely and thoughtfully, if you still 
doubt, the letters preceding; for while these phe- 
nomena have a past with which historic truth is con- 
cerned, and a future with which scientific truth must 
concern itself, so they have a present with which 
religious truth must meet and seek a harmony. 



THE END. 



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